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.

Research into improving the cross-browser consistency of both the “clearfix” and “overflow:hidden” methods of containing floats. The aim is to work around several bugs in IE6 and IE7.

This article introduces a new hack (with caveats) that can benefit the “clearfix” methods and the new block formatting context (NBFC) methods (e.g. using overflow:hidden) of containing floats. It’s one outcome of a collaboration between Nicolas Gallagher (that’s me) and Jonathan Neal.

If you are not familiar with the history and underlying principles behind methods of containing floats, I recommend that you have a read of Easy clearing (2004), Everything you know about clearfix is wrong (2010), and Clearfix reloaded and overflow:hidden demystified (2010).

Consistent float containment methods

The code is show below and documented in this GitHub gist. Found an improvement or flaw? Please fork the gist or leave a comment.

Micro clearfix hack: Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, Chrome, Opera 9+, IE 6+

.cf {
  /* for IE 6/7 */
  *zoom: expression(this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1", this.appendChild(document.createElement("br")).style.cssText="clear:both;font:0/0 serif");
  /* non-JS fallback */
  *zoom: 1;
}

.cf:before,
.cf:after {
  content: "";
  display: table;
}

.cf:after {
  clear: both;
}

Overflow hack (NBFC): Firefox 2+, Safari 2+, Chrome, Opera 9+, IE 6+

.nbfc {
  overflow: hidden;
  /* for IE 6/7 */
  *zoom: expression(this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1", this.appendChild(document.createElement("br")).style.cssText="clear:both;font:0/0 serif");
  /* non-JS fallback */
  *zoom: 1;
}

The GitHub gist also contains another variant of the clearfix method for modern browsers (based on Thierry Koblentz’s work). It provides greater visual consistency (avoiding edge-case bugs) for even older versions of Firefox.

The only difference from existing float-containment methods is the inclusion of a CSS expression that inserts a clearing line-break in IE 6 and IE 7. Jonathan and I found that it helps to resolve some of the visual rendering differences that exist between these browsers and more modern ones. First I’ll explain what some of those differences are and when they occur.

Containing floats in IE 6/7

In IE 6 and IE 7, the most common and robust method of containing floats within an element is to give it “layout” (find out more: On having Layout). Triggering “layout” on an element in IE 6/7 creates a new block formatting context (NBFC). However, certain IE bugs mean that previous float containment methods don’t result in cross-browser consistency. Specifically, this is what to expect in IE 6/7 when creating a NBFC:

1. The top- and bottom-margins of non-floated child elements are contained within the ancestor element that has been given “layout”. (Also expected in other browsers when creating a NBFC)
2. The bottom-margins of any right-floated descendants are contained within the ancestor. (Also expected in other browsers when creating a NBFC)
3. The bottom-margins of any left-floated children are not contained within the ancestor. The margin has no effect on the height of the ancestor and is truncated, having no affect outside of the ancestor either. (IE 6/7 bug)
4. In IE 6, if the right edge of the margin-box of a left-floated child is within 2px of the left edge of the content-box of its NBFC ancestor, the float’s bottom margin reappears and is contained within the parent. (IE 6 bug)
5. Unwanted white-space can appear at the bottom of a float-container. (IE 6/7 bug)

There is a lack of consistency between IE 6/7 and other browsers, and between IE 6 and IE 7. Thanks to Matthew Lein for his comment that directed me to this IE 6/7 behaviour. It was also recently mentioned by “Suzy” in a comment on Perishable Press.

IE 6/7’s truncation of the bottom-margin of left-floats is not exposed in many of the test-cases used to demonstrate CSS float containment techniques. Using an IE-only CSS expression helps to correct this bug.

The CSS expression

Including the much maligned <br style="clear:both"> at the bottom of the float-container, as well as creating a NBFC, resolved all these inconsistencies in IE 6/7. Doing so prevents those browsers from collapsing (or truncating) top- and bottom-margins of descendant elements.

Jonathan suggested inserting the clearing line-break in IE 6/7 only, using CSS expressions applied to fictional CSS properties. The CSS expression is the result of many iterations, tests, and suggestions. It runs only once, the first time an element receives the associated classname.

*zoom: expression(this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1", this.appendChild(document.createElement("br")).style.cssText="clear:both;font:0/0 serif");

It is applied to zoom, which is already being used to help contain floats in IE 6/7, and the use of the runtimeStyle object ensures that the expression is replaced once it has been run. The addition of font:0/0 serif prevents the occasional appearance of white-space at the bottom of a float-container. And the * hack ensures that only IE 6 and IE 7 parse the rule.

It’s worth noting that IE 6 and IE 7 parse almost any string used as CSS property. An earlier iteration used the entirely fictitious properties “-ms-inject” or “-ie-x” property to exploit this IE behaviour.

*-ie-x: expression(this.x||(this.innerHTML+='<br style="clear:both;font:0/0">',this.x=1));

However, this expression is evaluated over and over again. Using runtimeStyle instead avoids this. Sergey Chikuyonok also pointed out that using innerHTML destroys existing HTML elements that may event handlers attached to them. By using document.createElement and appendChild you can insert the new element without removing all the events attached to other descendant elements.

Containing floats in more modern browsers

There are two popular methods to contain floats in modern browsers. Creating a new block formatting context (as is done in IE 6/7 when hasLayout is triggered) or using a variant of the “clearfix” hack.

Creating a NBFC results in an element containing any floated children, and will prevent top- and bottom-margin collapse of non-floated children. When combined with the enhanced IE 6/7 containment method, it results in consistent cross-browser float containment.

The other method, known as “clearfix”, traditionally used a single :after pseudo-element to clear floats in a similar fashion to a structural, clearing HTML line-break. However, to prevent the top-margins of non-floats from collapsing into the margins of their float-containing ancestor, you also need to use the :before pseudo-element. This is the approach taken in Thierry Koblentz’s “clearfix reloaded”. In contemporary browsers, the micro clearfix hack is also suitable.

The method presented in this article should help improve the results of cross-browser float containment, whether you predominantly use “clearfix” or the NBFC method. The specific limitations of both the “clearfix” and various NBFC methods (as outlined in Thierry’s articles) remain.

Problems

Using a CSS expression to change the DOM in IE 6/7 creates problems of its own. Obviously, the DOM in IE 6/7 is now different to the DOM in other browsers. This affects any JavaScript DOM manipulation that may depend on :last-child or appending new children.

This is still an experimental work-in-progress that is primarily research-driven rather than seeking to become a practical snippet of production code. Any feedback, further testing, and further experimentation from others would be much appreciated.

Thanks to these people for contributing improvements: Jonathan Neal, Mathias Bynens, Sergey Chikuyonok, and Thierry Koblentz.

I recently included the option to add a large cover image, like the one above, to my posts. The source image is cropped, and below specific maximum dimensions it’s displayed at a predetermined aspect ratio. This post describes the implementation.

• Demo: Flexible CSS cover images

Known support: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE 9+

Features

The way that the cover image scales, and changes aspect ratio, is illustrated in the following diagram.

The cover image component must:

• render at a fixed aspect ratio, unless specific maximum dimensions are exceeded;
• support different aspect ratios;
• support max-height and max-width;
• support different background images;
• display the image to either fill, or be contained within the component;
• center the image.

Aspect ratio

The aspect ratio of an empty, block-level element can be controlled by setting a percentage value for its padding-bottom or padding-top. Given a declaration of padding-bottom:50% (and no explicit height), the rendered height of the element will be 50% of its width.

.CoverImage {
  padding-bottom: 50%;
}

Changing that padding value will change the aspect ratio. For example, padding of 25% results in an aspect ratio of 4:1, padding of 33.333% results in an aspect ratio of 3:1, etc.

Maximum dimensions

The problem with using this aspect ratio hack is that if the element has a max-height declared, it will not be respected. To get around this, the hack can be applied to a pseudo-element instead.

.CoverImage:before {
  content: "";
  display: block;
  padding-bottom: 50%;
}

Now the main element can take a max-height. It should also clip the pseudo-element overflow.

.CoverImage {
  display: block;
  max-height: 300px;
  max-width: 1000px;
  overflow: hidden;
}

.CoverImage:before {
  content: "";
  display: block;
  padding-bottom: 50%;
}

This aspect ratio pattern is provided by the FlexEmbed component for SUITCSS. That component is primarily for responsive video embeds, but it’s flexible enough to be useful whenever you need an element rendered at a predetermined aspect ratio. It comes with modifiers for 2:1, 3:1, 16:9, and 4:3 aspect ratios. The cover image component can extend the FlexEmbed component.

<div class="CoverImage FlexEmbed FlexEmbed--2by1"></div>

Background image

The cover image is applied as a background image that is sized to cover the entire area of the element. This makes sure the image is clipped to fit the aspect ratio of the element.

.CoverImage {
  ...
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  background-size: cover;
}

If you want different cover images for different instances of the component, they can be applied via the style attribute.

<div class="..." style="background-image: url(cover.jpg)"></div>

The image can be fully centered by using background positioning and block centering. This makes sure that the image is centered in the element, and that the element is centered within its parent (when it reaches the max-width value).

.CoverImage {
  ...
  background-position: 50%;
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  background-size: cover;
  margin: 0 auto;
}

Final result

If you depend on the FlexEmbed module, the amount of additional code required is minimal. (See the demo for all the code, including the FlexEmbed dependency.)

/**
 * Requires: suitcss/flex-embed
 */

.CoverImage {
  background-position: 50%;
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  background-size: cover;
  margin: 0 auto;
  max-height: 300px;
  max-width: 1000px;
}

<div class="CoverImage FlexEmbed FlexEmbed--3by1"
     style="background-image:url(cover.jpg)">
</div>

You can add further customizations, such as setting the accompanying background color, or providing a means to switch between the cover and contain keywords for background-size.

Internet Explorer 9–11 suffer from various bugs that prevent proper scaling of inline SVG’s. This is particularly problematic for SVG icons with variable widths. This is the canvas-based hack I’ve been using to work around the issue.

A popular way to use SVG icons is to generate a spritemap of SVG symbol‘s that you then reference from elsewhere in a document. Most articles on the topic assume your icon dimensions are uniformly square. Twitter’s SVG icons (crafted by @sofo) are variable width, to produce consistent horizontal whitespace around the vectors.

Most browsers will preserve the intrinsic aspect ratio of an SVG. Ideally, I want to set a common height for all the icons (e.g., 1em), and let the browser scale the width of each icon proportionally. This also makes it easy to resize icons in particular contexts – just change the height.

Unfortunately, IE 9–11 do not preserve the intrinsic aspect ratio of an inline SVG. The svg element will default to a width of 300px (the default for replaced content elements). This means it’s not easy to work with variable-width SVG icons. No amount of CSS hacking fixed the problem, so I looked elsewhere – and ended up using canvas.

canvas and aspect ratios

A canvas element – with height and width attributes set – will preserve its aspect ratio when one dimension is scaled. The example below sets a 3:1 aspect ratio.

<canvas height="1" width="3"></canvas>

You can then scale the canvas by changing either dimension in CSS.

canvas {
  display: block;
  height: 2rem;
}

Demo: proportional scaling of canvas.

Fixing SVG scaling in IE

This makes canvas useful for creating aspect ratios. Since IE doesn’t preserve the intrinsic aspect ratio of SVG icons, you can use canvas as a shim. A canvas of the correct aspect ratio provides a scalable frame. The svg can then be positioned to fill the space created by this frame.

The HTML is straightforward:

<div class="Icon" role="img" aria-label="Twitter">
  <canvas class="Icon-canvas" height="1" width="3"></canvas>
  <svg class="Icon-svg">
    <use fill="currentcolor" xlink:href="#icon-twitter"></use>
  </svg>
</div>

So is the CSS:

.Icon {
  display: inline-block;
  height: 1em; /* default icon height */
  position: relative;
  user-select: none;
}

.Icon-canvas {
  display: block;
  height: 100%;
  visibility: hidden;
}

.Icon-svg {
  height: 100%;
  left: 0;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  width: 100%;
}

Setting the canvas height to 100% means it will scale based on the height of the component’s root element – just as SVG’s do in non-IE browsers. Changing the height of the Icon element scales the inner SVG icon while preserving its 3:1 aspect ratio.

Demo: proportional scaling of svg in IE.

Creating an Icon component

The hack is best added to (and eventually removed from) an existing icon component’s implementation.

If you’re generating and inlining an SVG spritemap, you will need to extract the height and width (usually from viewBox) of each of your icons during the build step. If you’re already using the gulp-svgstore plugin, it supports extracting metadata.

Those dimensions need to be set on the canvas element to produce the correct aspect ratio for a given icon.

Example React component (built with webpack):

import iconData from './lib/icons-data.json';
import React from 'react';
import './index.css';

class Icon extends React.Component {
  render() {
    const props = this.props;
    const height = iconData[props.name.height];
    const width = iconData[props.name.width];

    // React doesn't support namespaced attributes, so we have to set the
    // 'use' tag with innerHTML
    const useTag = `<use fill="currentcolor"
                      xlink:href="#icon-${props.name}">
                    </use>`;

    return (
      <span className="Icon">
        <canvas className="Icon-canvas"
          height={height}
          width={width}
        />
        <svg className="Icon-svg"
          dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: useTag}}
          key={props.name}
        />
      </span>
    );
  }
}

export default Icon;

When I introduced this hack to a code base at Twitter, it had no impact on the the rest of the team or the rest of the code base – one of the many benefits of a component-based UI.

The Home Ministry had on Thursday allowed chariot construction with a condition that no religious congregation should take place around the Ratha Khala.

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Plenert, Gerhard Johannes, author

Mellon, Elizabeth

Inmon, William H

Crainer, Stuart

Crainer, Stuart

Britt, Thomas W., 1966-

Gunther, Robert E., 1960- author

Stull, Edward. author

Hawk, Ryan, author

Wilson, Meena S., author

Grinberg, Alex. author

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