Theory
Theory
Comments

Shorthand properties

CSS has longhand properties that control individual style settings and shorthand properties that set several related values at once.

For example, font-size is a longhand property that controls the font size. The font shorthand sets the font family, size, line height, and other font properties. The browser expands a shorthand into its component longhand properties. For example:

font: 16px/26px "Arial", sans-serif;

The browser expands this into longhand properties and their values:

font-size: 16px;                  /* Was assigned in font */
line-height: 26px;                /* Was assigned in font */
font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; /* Was assigned in font */
font-weight: normal;              /* Was not assigned in font */
font-style: normal;               /* Was not assigned in font */
font-variant: normal;             /* Was not assigned in font */

If a longhand value is omitted from a shorthand, the browser resets it to its initial value. In this example, font supplies 16px for font-size, while font-weight is reset to its initial value, normal.

A shorthand sets all of its component properties. Omitted components are reset to their initial values, so use shorthands with care. For example, if you leave out the line height:

font: 16px "Arial", sans-serif;

Here, line-height is reset to its initial value, normal, which may disrupt the text layout.

It’s now time to add a pretty background to the blog page. We use the shorthand background property to achieve this.

index.html
style.css

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>The website of a beginning coder</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> </head> <body> <header> <h1>The website of a beginning coder</h1> </header> <main> <img class="avatar" src="img/raccoon.svg" width="80" height="80" alt="Avatar"> <nav> <h2>Recent Posts</h2> <ul> <li><a href="day-1.html">Day One. How I forgot to feed the cat</a></li> <li><a href="day-2.html">Day Two. I want to become a coder</a></li> <li><a href="day-3.html">Day Three. My cat is upset with me</a></li> <li><a href="day-4.html">Day Four. How I almost got sick</a></li> <li><a href="day-5.html">Day Five. I am relaxing</a></li> <li><a href="day-6.html">Day Six. How I failed to understand anything</a></li> <li><a href="day-7.html">Day Seven. Muffin gave me an assignment</a></li> <li><a href="day-8.html">Day Eight. It’s getting very serious</a></li> <li><a href="day-9.html">Day Nine. Or, more precisely, night</a></li> <li><a href="day-10.html">Day Ten. Summing up</a></li> <li><a href="day-11.html">Day Eleven. Everything in moderation</a></li> <li><a href="day-12.html">Day Twelve. Everyone loves cookies</a></li> <li><a href="day-13.html">Day Thirteen. I found an article</a></li> <li><a href="day-14.html">Day Fourteen. A New Format</a></li> <li><a href="day-15.html">Day Fifteen. The Selfie Gallery</a></li> </ul> </nav> <section> <p>Greetings to everyone! Welcome to my first site. Up until just recently I had no idea what a coder does for a living, but now I have found <a href="https://htmlacademy.org/courses">interactive courses in HTML and CSS</a> and I have set myself the goal of becoming one. I was even assigned an instructor, Muffin, who won’t let me slack off and will keep track of my progress.</p> <p>My first assignment is to keep a diary and honestly write about all of my accomplishments.</p> </section> <section> Skills section </section> </main> <footer> Website footer </footer> </body> </html>

CSS

body { padding: 0 30px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; color: #222222; /* Set the property below */ } h1 { font-size: 36px; line-height: normal; } h2 { font-size: 20px; line-height: normal; } a { color: #0099ef; text-decoration: underline; } .avatar { border-radius: 10px; } nav { margin-bottom: 30px; padding: 20px; background-color: #4470c4; border: 5px solid #2d508f; color: #ffffff; } nav a { color: #ffffff; } ul { list-style: none; padding-left: 0; } footer { margin-top: 30px; }

Goalscompleted

Assign the shorthand background property with the value
#ffffff url("img/bg-page.png") no-repeat top center to the body tag.

Shorthand properties

Comments

Log in

Sign up

Restore access