This property describes the font thickness of a section. Its value can be
absolute or relative to the parent container thickness if it has one.
Child elements inherit the resulting weight, not the keyword value. If the
desired font-weight is not available to the browser, the nearest
approximation should be used.
Allowed Values
inherit
[CSS2] [N6|O7]
Type: Explicit
Description:
Explicitly sets the value of this property to that of the parent.
Description:
These values are absolute font weights on a scale. As such, it allows
much greater control than the HTML <b> element it replaces. The
values 'normal' and 'bold' listed below map to 400 and 700 respectively.
normal | bold
[CSS1|CSS2]
[IE3B1|N4B2|O3.5]
Type: Explicit
Description:
These values are simple toggles to allow an author to specify a section
as bold or not bold.
lighter | bolder
[CSS1|CSS2]
[IE4B1|N4B2|O3.5]
Type: Calculated
Description:
These values select the next higher or lower value on the font weight
scale relative to the weight inherited from the parent if possible.
- Font weights 1-500 seem to do nothing in my Windows tests. Reported
elsewhere: IE Macintosh does nothing with levels 100-400.
- 700 appears to map correctly to bold, but in my tests 800 was the
same as 700, and 600 was bolder than both 700/800.
- The "inherit" value is listed in the standards for this property, although
the property is itself inherited. This means it is impossible to check
to see if this value is actually supported in any browser. Mozilla began
generally supporting "inherit" where appropriate in version 6.x, and
Opera beginning mostly in 7.x. IE does not yet support "inherit" anywhere
yet. So, for all inherited properties, support information for the
"inherit" value will be listed as beginning in these respective versions.
Internet Explorer
4.0+:
- Scenario: content is made "bold" (700.) Nested inside is a section
made "bolder" (900.) Nested inside this section is a section made
"lighter" - the result is 600 instead of the original 700.
Netscape
4.x:
- Making normal (400) text "bolder" does not appear to
have any immediate effect, but 500 is the next step up, which is
not rendered differently than 400. Bolder/lighter DO
have an effect though.
Opera
3.5:
- Scenario: content is made "bold" (700.) Nested inside is a section
made "bolder" (900.) Nested inside this section is a section made
"lighter" - the result is 600 instead of the original 700.