RE: style sheets, dropped capitals and floatimg text

Hmm, well, you're correct in what we (MSIE) require.  As to your other
issue, I would not expect any of the permutations you mention to work,
except "font: 36pt bold;" (which won't be bold, necessarily - that's "a
font from the family named "bold", 36pt size").  The CSS 'font' property
REQUIRES a font-size, and requires it after any weight, style or variant
in the 'font' property.

You can say, for both browsers,
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
    .bigGuy {
        float: left;
        font-size: 500%; 
        width: 1em;
    }
</STYLE>

Be forewarned, however, I've seen some serious weirdness in Navigator 4
WRT floating SPANs that are much wider than a couple of ems at most -
they seem to have severe inheritance problems in some circumstances.
Works fine for drop-cap effects, though.

	-Chris
Chris Wilson
cwilso@microsoft.com
***

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Peter Belesis [SMTP:peter@webreference.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, August 14, 1997 12:22 PM
> To:	www-html@atomism.demon.co.uk
> Cc:	www-html@w3.org
> Subject:	Re: style sheets, dropped capitals and floatimg text
> 
> www-html@atomism.demon.co.uk wrote:
> > 
> > Hi
> > 
> > I'm trying to get this to work:
> >  _______
> > [__  __] HIS SEEMS to be very difficult
> >    []    to achieve using style sheets.
> >    []    I've tried floating text but
> >    []    nothing seems to happen in both
> >    []    MSIE 4 and Netscape 4.01. Does
> > anyone know how to create a dropped
> > capital at the start of a paragraph with
> > the rest of the paragraph wrapping
> > around it?
> 
> Most of the answers seem to revolve around the CSS spec and not what
> is
> supported in the two most popular browsers today.
> 
> Both Microsoft and Netscape DO NOT support the P:first-letter
> pseudo element. Both have stated it in their release notes.
> For the time being, this work-around works in both browsers.
> 
> <STYLE TYPE="text/css">
>     .bigGuy {
>         float: left; 
>         font: bold 36pt Arial ; 
>         width: 1em;
>     }
> </STYLE>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY>
> <SPAN CLASS=bigGuy>T</SPAN>his paragraph will have a big first
> letter...
> 
> WARNING! Although this snippet seems straightforward, it's not.
> It must be used as a minimum as presented above. Additions may be made
> but do not change the properties or the attribute order in the
> declaration.
> 
> MSIE requires *width* or else will throw text off-screen (bug);
> NS can do without.
> NS requires *36pt* or other size to be placed before a font call.
> eg. *font: bold 36pt;* will not work
>     *font: 36pt bold;* will not work
>     *font: Arial 36pt;* will not work
> and, of course, no hope in hell for *font: 36pt; to work.
>     *font: 36pt Arial;* WORKS!
> 
> who tested this thing anyway?
> 
> hope this helps
> 
> -- 
> 
> Peter Belesis            Dynamic HTML Lab
> peter@webreference.com   http://www.webreference.com/dhtml

Received on Thursday, 14 August 1997 16:29:29 UTC