HTML&CSS · December 20, 2023

Css Basic: font-variant-alternates

CSS Basic: font-variant-alternates

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a fundamental technology used for styling web pages. It allows web developers to control the appearance of text, layout, and other elements on a website. One of the lesser-known CSS properties is font-variant-alternates, which provides additional options for displaying characters in different styles.

Understanding font-variant-alternates

The font-variant-alternates property is used to specify alternate glyphs or characters for a particular text. Glyphs are the individual characters or symbols that make up a font. By using this property, web developers can access different variations of characters within a font family.

For example, some fonts have alternate versions of certain characters, such as ligatures or swashes. Ligatures are special characters that combine two or more letters into a single glyph, enhancing the visual appeal of the text. Swashes, on the other hand, are decorative flourishes or extensions added to characters.

Using font-variant-alternates

The font-variant-alternates property can be applied to any text element, such as headings, paragraphs, or individual spans. It accepts various values to control the display of alternate characters:

  • normal: This is the default value, which displays the standard characters of the font.
  • historical-forms: This value enables the use of historical or traditional forms of characters.
  • stylistic(): This value allows you to specify a specific stylistic set of characters. For example, stylistic(2) would display the second stylistic set of characters available in the font.
  • styleset(): This value allows you to specify a specific set of characters based on their style. For example, styleset(3) would display the third set of characters with a different style.
  • character-variant(): This value allows you to specify a specific variant of a character. For example, character-variant(5) would display the fifth variant of a character.

It's important to note that not all fonts support alternate characters or have multiple stylistic sets. Therefore, it's crucial to check the font documentation or test the font to see which options are available.

Example Usage

Let's say we have a paragraph of text with the class name "alternate-text". We can apply the font-variant-alternates property to display alternate characters:

.alternate-text {
  font-variant-alternates: stylistic(2);
}

In this example, the paragraph with the class "alternate-text" will display the second stylistic set of characters available in the font.

Summary

The font-variant-alternates property in CSS allows web developers to access alternate characters or glyphs within a font family. By using values like stylistic() or styleset(), developers can control the display of characters with different styles or variations. However, it's important to note that not all fonts support alternate characters, so it's essential to check the font documentation or test the font to see which options are available.

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