Defeating Typography Orphans and Widows with CSS
If you’ve ever struggled with typographic widows and orphans, you’re not alone. These pesky single words or lines that break awkwardly can frustrate even the most seasoned developer. But fear not, there may be a solution on the horizon.
One common technique is to use non-breaking spaces (
) to prevent these issues. However, manually inserting them in headlines or paragraphs is time-consuming and not always effective across all container widths.
Enter a potential CSS solution: text-wrap: balance
. This property aims to balance text flow in headings and paragraphs, creating a more visually pleasing result for multi-line content.
While this approach isn’t explicitly for fighting widows and orphans, it can effectively prevent them as a byproduct of the text balancing process. The CSSWG is also exploring options like min-last-line
to address these typographic challenges more directly in the future.
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element in HTML, as highlighted by Dana Byerly, provides a visually appealing way to display progress indicators. With proper accessibility considerations, this element can enhance user experience with meaningful visual feedback.
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