This morning hundreds of ladybirds were flying through the air and massing on the white walls of the house. I managed to get a few clear macro photographs.

The sun was shining and the ladybirds seemed to be attracted to anything white. I stuck a white T-shirt on and headed outside. Pretty soon I was covered in them and could pluck them from my shirt to get some close ups using my little Canon IXUS 60.

At some point a ladybird took off just before I tried to photograph it and I decided I’d try to capture that moment. A few minutes later I’d worked out that I could prompt one of the insects to walk up my finger like the stem of a flower, that they’d take off when they reached the tip, and that they took up a distinct posture just before their wing-case shot open.

The speed at which they prepare to take off, open their wings, and fly away is so quick that I just had to take the shot as soon as I saw a ladybird get into the “take-off position” and hope that I reacted fast enough to get a picture of the open wing-case.

This is a quick experiment that reproduces an image from I Love Typography using semantic HTML, CSS 2.1, a little CSS3. Along the way, I learnt about a few modern browser bugs and inconsistencies.

• See the demo: CSS typography experiment.
• See the bugs: Some new CSS 2.1 and CSS3 bugs in modern browsers.

I came across an image on I Love Typography that I thought could be reproduced using only semantic HTML and CSS.

The idea was to reproduce the image from simple markup, and to rely as much as possible on what can be achieved with CSS.

This is the HTML I ended up using.

<p>I love <strong>typography</strong> <em>a lot</em></p>

This is the CSS that controls the presentation of that content.

body {
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
  font-family: Times New Roman, serif;
  background: #000;
}

p {
  position: relative;
  width: 1100px;
  padding: 100px 0 0;
  margin: 0 auto;
  font-size: 175px;
  font-weight: bold;
  line-height: 1.2;
  letter-spacing: -13px;
  color: #0caac7;
  transform: rotate(-20deg);
}

/* "i" */
p:first-letter {
  float: left;
  margin: -137px -20px 0 0;
  font-size: 880px;
  line-height: 595px;
  text-transform: lowercase;
}

/* "love" */
p:first-line {
  font-size: 200px;
}

/* "typography" */
p strong {
  display: block;
  margin: -80px 0 0;
  font-weight: normal;
  letter-spacing: -2px;
  text-transform: capitalize;
}

p strong:first-letter {
  margin-right: -30px;
  color: #fff;
}

/* "a lot" */
p em {
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 10;
  top: 100px;
  left: 147px;
  width: 136px;
  overflow: hidden;
  padding-left: 64px;
  font-size: 200px;
  font-style: normal;
  text-transform: lowercase;
  color: #fff;
}

p em:first-letter {
  float: left;
  margin: 130px 0 0 -55px;
  font-size: 80px;
  font-style: italic;
  line-height: 20px;
  color: #fff;
}

/* create the heart shape */
p:before,
p:after {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 1;
  top: 225px;
  left: 120px;
  width: 75px;
  height: 50px;
  background: #000;
  transform: rotate(45deg);
  border-radius: 25px 0 0 30px;
}

p:after {
  left: 138px;
  transform: rotate(-45deg);
  border-radius: 0 25px 30px 0;
}

/* hide the tip of the "t" from "a lot" */
p strong:before {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 11;
  top: 205px;
  left: 341px;
  width: 7px;
  height: 7px;
  background: #000;
  border-radius: 7px;
}

The final CSS typography experiment approximates the original image in all modern browsers that support the CSS3 properties of border-radius and transform.

Some browsers render type (especially after rotational transformations) better than others. Note that all the screenshots are taken from browsers running on Windows Vista OS.

Browser bugs and inconsistencies

I’ve put together a small test page to highlight some new CSS 2.1 and CSS3 bugs in modern browsers. It includes two new CSS 2.1 bugs in Internet Explorer 8.

This toad jumped out of the long grass near a pond and kindly let me take a few photographs of it.

Görög, Mihály, 1951-

Finney, Martha I., author

Munson, Chuck, author

Duening, Thomas N

Nelson-Smith, Stephen

Britt, Thomas W., 1966-

Phillips, Michael, author

Robbins, Stephen P., 1943- author

Kerzner, Harold, author

Runion, Meryl

Frisendal, Thomas. author

Satheesh, Mithun, author

Davies, Joseph, 1962-

Mains, Norman

Maciariello, Joseph A., author

Song, Mike, 1964-

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