CSS font-feature-settings Property

Posted in CSS Tutorial

Updated on Oct 02, 2024

By Mari Selvan

👁️ 17 - Views

⏳ 4 mins

💬 1 Comment

Photo Credit to CodeToFun

🙋 Introduction

The font-feature-settings property in CSS allows web developers to control advanced typographic features in OpenType fonts. This includes ligatures, alternate glyphs, and other font-specific variations that can enhance the readability and aesthetics of text.

By using this property, you can fine-tune the typography on your website to achieve a more polished and professional look.

💡 Syntax

The syntax for the font-feature-settings property involves specifying feature tag strings and their values.

Syntax

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element {
  font-feature-settings: "feature" value;
}

feature: A four-character feature tag (e.g., 'liga' for standard ligatures).
value: A numeric value to enable (1) or disable (0) the feature.

🎛️ Default Value

The default value of the font-feature-settings property is normal, which means that no specific OpenType features are applied, and the browser uses the font's default settings.

🏠 Property Values

Value	Description
normal	No font features are explicitly enabled.
feature tag	A string representing a specific font feature (e.g., "liga", "smcp").
value	A numeric value (usually 0 or 1) to disable or enable the feature.

📄 Example

In this example, we'll enable standard ligatures and small caps in a paragraph.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <title>CSS font-feature-settings Example</title>
  <style>
    p {
      font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;
      font-feature-settings: "liga" 1, "smcp" 1;
    }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Paragraph with Font Features Enabled</h1>
  <p>
    The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Check the ligatures and small caps in this sentence.
  </p>
</body>
</html>

🖥️ Browser Compatibility

The font-feature-settings property is supported in most modern browsers, including the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera. However, it is always a good practice to test your website across different browsers to ensure compatibility.

🎉 Conclusion

The font-feature-settings property provides web developers with powerful control over typography, allowing the activation of specific OpenType features to improve text rendering.

By enabling features like ligatures, alternate glyphs, and small caps, you can enhance the visual appeal and readability of your text. Experiment with different settings to see how they can contribute to a more sophisticated and professional design for your website.