HTML&CSS · December 20, 2023

Css Basic: font-variant-ligatures

CSS Basics: font-variant-ligatures

When it comes to web design, the choice of fonts plays a crucial role in creating an appealing and readable website. CSS provides various properties to control the appearance of text, and one such property is font-variant-ligatures. In this article, we will explore what font-variant-ligatures is and how it can enhance the typography of your website.

Understanding font-variant-ligatures

The font-variant-ligatures property is used to control the rendering of ligatures in a font. Ligatures are special characters that combine two or more characters into a single glyph. They are commonly used in typography to improve the visual appearance of certain character combinations.

By default, most modern fonts have ligatures enabled. However, there are cases where you may want to disable or enable specific ligatures to achieve the desired typographic effect. This is where the font-variant-ligatures property comes into play.

Using font-variant-ligatures

The font-variant-ligatures property accepts several values to control the ligatures:

  • normal: This is the default value, and it enables the standard ligatures defined in the font.
  • none: This value disables all ligatures in the font.
  • common-ligatures: This value enables common ligatures, such as those for letter combinations like "fi" and "fl".
  • no-common-ligatures: This value disables common ligatures.
  • discretionary-ligatures: This value enables discretionary ligatures, which are more decorative and less common.
  • no-discretionary-ligatures: This value disables discretionary ligatures.
  • historical-ligatures: This value enables historical ligatures, which are based on older typographic conventions.
  • no-historical-ligatures: This value disables historical ligatures.

Let's take a look at an example:

body {
  font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;
  font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;
}

In the above example, we set the font-variant-ligatures property to common-ligatures. This enables ligatures for common character combinations, enhancing the visual appearance of the text rendered with the "Open Sans" font.

Browser Support

The font-variant-ligatures property is supported by most modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. However, it is always a good practice to check the compatibility with older browser versions if you need to support them.

Conclusion

The font-variant-ligatures property is a powerful tool for controlling ligatures in web typography. By enabling or disabling specific ligatures, you can enhance the visual appeal and readability of your website's text. Experiment with different values of font-variant-ligatures to find the best typographic style for your content.

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