Style demo

Table of Contents

When I started working on this page, I was planning on writing a style guide. In the end it turned out not so much as a guide on how to use certain elements, but more a demonstration of what certain content looks like.

Over the years I’ve found this page useful when redesigning this site: check how things look or if I have forgotten to style anything. But it also serves as an example of how to create e.g. nested lists, definition lists, figures and tables (to name a some types of content I do not use all too often).

Sections

Headings

First we’ll have a look at the headings.

Example H1

Usually there is just one <h1> element on a page and it is used for the title of the page, as you can see at the top of this page.

Example H2

If an article is long enough, I divide it into sections. I use the <h2> element to do so. A nice example are some of the conference note posts where each talk gets its own section.

Example H3

Occasionally more hierarchy is necessary and this is where the <h3> comes in. To use the conference notes as an example again: sometimes a talk consists of multiple sections and I want to mark these as such.

Example H4

In very rare occasions even more levels are needed and that is what the <h4> is for.

Example H5

I don’t expect to reach the <h5> level, but there is how that would look like.

Grouping content

Paragraph

Because this is a weblog, most of the content will be contained in paragraphs, using the <p> element.

I am using a complete font family. This means I can use e.g. bold to increase the importance of text (using <strong>) and italic to put emphasis on other text (using the <em> element). Should it be necessary, I can even combine them to bold italic. Having separate fonts means that the result looks better than when the browser tries to fake them. In other words, I can say no to faux bold.

Code blocks

As this is a technical weblog, pieces of code are often part of the articles. They can be included in two separate ways: inline in a paragraph and as a preformatted chunk of text.

For code that needs to be displayed in a normal sentence, as demonstrated earlier, use the <code> element. For preformatted text, use <code> wrapped in a <pre> element, like so:

<pre>
  <code>
    Put your source code here...

    <!-- And another line, but this time quite a bit longer to see what happens when a line is longer than the width of the content block. -->
  </code>
</pre>

Blockquote

There are a couple of ways to quote someone. In the most simple form, it’s just a <blockquote>:

Someone said this.

You can also add a source URL (which won’t be visible on the page, but is present as the cite attribute) and an attribution, for example:

The blockquote element represents a section that is quoted from another source.

Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source, whose address, if it has one, may be cited in the cite attribute.

—HTML5 specification

You can, if you want to, include a link to a source in the attribution:

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!
—H. G. Wells, Time Machine

Lists

There are three types of lists: ordered lists (using <ol>) unordered lists (<ul>) and finally description lists (<dl>).

In ordered lists each item is created by an <li> element and each item is preceded by a number:

  1. Here is an example of an item.
  2. This is an item with a nested list.
    1. The first sub item.
    2. The second sub item.
  3. And back to the original list but this time the list item is a bit longer just to see whether the line is nicely indented.

Unordered lists are similar to ordered lists in the sense that they are consist of <li> elements. The difference is that the items are not numbered.

  • An item in an unordered list
  • This item has a nested list:
    • Item one
    • Item two
  • And a last item that contains a bit more text. This mainly shows that if an item spans more than a single line, it is nicely indented.

Description lists are created a bit differently. The <dl> element must contain one or more terms (<dt>) which are followed by one or more definitions (<dd>). Note that one term may have more definitions and multiple terms may be related to a single definition.

Single term
Single definition
First term
Second term
Single definition
Single term
First definition
Second definition which—just as with the lists from above—is longer just to demonstrate that we also have a nice indentation going on here.

Figures

For figures, such as images, which are (according to the HTML5 spec) self-contained and [are] typically referenced as a single unit from the main flow of the document you can use the <figure> element. Optionally you can add a caption, using the <figcaption> element.

For example if I would talk about the Ubuntu Circle of Friends logo, I might want to include an image of that logo.

Ubuntu Circle of Friends logo

The caption of this image in which I can tell this is the Ubuntu Circle of Friends logo.

Notes

Sometimes I want to make (side)notes in my text.

Just a sidenote.

With two paragraphs.

Specifically for the situation where I want to make it explicit that I have updated a post, there is this note:

Update (2021-08-19)
I have created a “noteshortcode.

If you look at the Markdown source of this page, you can see that I’ve added the type parameter with the value update. The idea is that I want this note to stand out from the normal text, but also draw less attention than the regular notes.

Text-level semantics

Anchors

Using the <a> tag you can create links.

First an example of a visited link and then an example of an unvisited link.

Emphasis

To stress emphasis on a certain piece of text, use the <em> element.

Example: You must try this fancy HTML element.

Strong

To change the importance of text, use the <strong> element.

Example: Do not use this element too much.

Deleted text

To mark a text as having been removed, use the <del> element (for example on a todo list).

Example of <del>:

  • Write style demo
  • Update style demo

Cite

To represent a title of a “work” (e.g. a book, film, report, etc) use the <cite> element. Most often found on this site in combination with a quote (using the <blockquote> or <q> element).

Example: To know why 42 is an important number, you must have read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Phrasing content

Content quoted from another source, not being a block of code, should use the <q> element. Note that the browser add the quotation marks.

Example: Okay, I’ll tell you: 42 is the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

Inline code

To display code fragments inline, use the <code> element, as shown throughout this page.

Tabular data

For tabular data, the <table> element is available. There are a number of elements related to tables, for instance <thead>, <tbody>, <tfoot>, <tr>, <th>, <td>, <caption>. I’ve combined these in one example (without the <tfoot>):

The caption of this table
Option Value 1 (%) Value 2 (abs) Foo
A first item in this table 58 377.0 > 234
Second item 14 91.0 4,718
Third item 21 136.5 13,457
Last item 7 45.5 56,728
Total 100 650.0 > 75,137

Note that the rows are separated by a horizontal line. This should make it easier to follow a row on larger tables while being less ‘heavy’ than e.g. using a background colour every other row.