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The text-indent Property
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  • 1. Unicode Characters
  • 2. The text-shadow Property
  • 3. Horizontal Text Shadow Offset
  • 4. Vertical Text Shadow Offset
  • 5. Text Shadow Feathering
  • 6. The Text Shadow Color
  • 7. Embedded Effect for Text
  • 8. Decorative Retro Shadow
  • 9. Challenge: Psychedelic Shadows
  • 10. Logo: Custom Font
  • 11. Logo: Icon Font
  • 12. Logo: Size Alignment
  • 13. Applying Decorative Styling to the Line, Step 1
  • 14. Applying Decorative Styling to the Line, Step 2
  • 15. The text-indent Property
  • 16. The: first-letter Pseudo Element
  • 17. : first-line Pseudo Element
  • 18. Column Markup: The column-count Property
  • 19. Column Markup: The column-width Property
  • 20. Column Markup: The column-gap Property
  • 21. Text Direction
  • 22. Text Direction and Tables
  • 23. Overflowing Text
  • 24. Spacing Between Words
  • 25. Challenge: Why So Serious?
  • 26. Challenge: Play With Fonts
: first-line Pseudo Element
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  • Theory
  • Theory
  • Comments

The: first-letter Pseudo Element

There are special pseudo-elements in CSS that allow you to style the first letter in a word or the first line in a block of text.

When the first letter appears larger and is set off from the rest of a block of text, it is called a drop cap. Historically, the chapter and section headers in printed books and manuscripts were decorated with a drop cap. To create a drop cap, we’ll use the ::first-letter pseudo-element:

p::first-letter { color: red; }

Let’s create and style the drop cap.

Comments

  • index.html
  • style.css
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>The: first-letter Pseudo Element</title> <meta charset="utf-8"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> </head> <body> <article> <p>Muffin woke on up in his cat bed very early that morning. The day promised to be eventful. Due to this, he decided to work out on his chin-up bar. The cat eventually tired himself out exercising, and he decided to relax a bit and watch TV. Having regained his strength, the cat went about his usual business of making a mess. However, he was caught in the act.</p> <p>After lunch, which, as usual, consisted of dry food and a piece of chicken that he had hidden away the day before, Muffin got down to working on his Cat Energy website. He had to figure out how to make it adaptable and to solve a strange bug in Chrome, which only manifested itself at a certain screen width. His paws were itching to simply delete the piece of code with the bug, but in the end he was able to fix the problem.</p> <p>In the late afternoon, there was a great opportunity to snack on some sour cream, but this time the cat was caught at the crime scene. Having decided that he had accomplished enough for today, Muffin curled up in bed with a clear conscience.</p> </article> </body> </html>
CSS
body { padding: 10px; background: url("bokeh.jpg") no-repeat 50% 0; color: #333333; font-size: 14px; font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; } article { padding: 20px; background-color: rgba(240, 240, 240, 0.85); } p { margin: 0; text-indent: 24px; line-height: 22px; } p:first-child::first-letter { }

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    1. Set float: left for the pseudo-element ::first-letter,
    2. and then set "Georgia", serif font with 76px size and line spacing of 60px.

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