Skip to Content
Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition
book

Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

by Eric A. Meyer
March 2004
Intermediate to advanced
528 pages
16h 33m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

Chapter 4. Values and Units

In this chapter, we’ll tackle the elements that are the basis for almost everything you can do with CSS: the units that affect the colors, distances, and sizes of a whole host of properties. Without units, you couldn’t declare that a paragraph should be purple, or that an image should have 10 pixels of blank space around it, or that a heading’s text should be a certain size. By understanding the concepts put forth here, you’ll be able to learn and use the rest of CSS much more quickly.

Numbers

There are two types of numbers in CSS: integers (“whole” numbers) and reals (fractional numbers). These number types serve primarily as the basis for other value types, but, in a few instances, raw numbers can be used as a value for a property.

In CSS2.1, a real number is defined to be an integer that is optionally followed by a decimal and fractional numbers. Therefore, the following are all valid number values: 15.5, -270.00004, and 5. Both integers and reals may be either positive or negative, although properties can (and often do) restrict the range of numbers they will accept.

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide

Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide

Eric A. Meyer

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596005253Catalog PageErrata