CSS Border, our personal favorite CSS attribute, allows you to completely customize the borders that appear around HTML elements. With HTML, it used to be impossible to place a border around an element, except for the table. CSS Borders let you create crisp, customized border styles with very little work, compared to the antiquated methods of HTML.
Border Style
The border-style property specifies what kind of border to display.
None of the border properties will have
ANY effect unless the border-style property is set!
border-style values:
none: Defines no border
dotted: Defines a dotted border
dashed: Defines a dashed border
solid: Defines a solid border
double: Defines two borders. The width of the two borders are the same as the border-width value
groove: Defines a 3D grooved border. The effect depends on the border-color value
ridge: Defines a 3D ridged border. The effect depends on the border-color value
inset: Defines a 3D inset border. The effect depends on the border-color value
outset: Defines a 3D outset border. The effect depends on the border-color value
Border Width
The border-width property is used to set the width of the border.
The width is set in pixels, or by using one of the three pre-defined values:
thin, medium, or thick.
Example
p.one
{
border-style:solid;
border-width:5px;
}
p.two
{
border-style:solid;
border-width:medium;
}
Border Color
The border-color property is used to set the color of the border. The color can be set by:
- name - specify a color name, like "red"
- RGB - specify a RGB value, like "rgb(255,0,0)"
- Hex - specify a hex value, like "#ff0000"
You can also set the border color to "transparent".
Example
p.one
{
border-style:solid;
border-color:red;
}
p.two
{
border-style:solid;
border-color:#98bf21;
}
Border - Individual sides
In CSS it is possible to specify different borders for different sides:
Example
p
{
border-top-style:dotted;
border-right-style:solid;
border-bottom-style:dotted;
border-left-style:solid;
}
The example above can also be set with a single property:
Example
border-style:dotted solid;
The border-style property can have from one to four values.
- border-style:dotted solid double dashed;
- top border is dotted
- right border is solid
- bottom border is double
- left border is dashed
- border-style:dotted solid double;
- top border is dotted
- right and left borders are solid
- bottom border is double
- border-style:dotted solid;
- top and bottom borders are dotted
- right and left borders are solid
- border-style:dotted;
- all four borders are dotted
The border-style property is used in the example above. However, it also works with border-width
and border-color.
Border - Shorthand property
As you can see from the examples above, there are many properties to consider
when dealing with borders.
To shorten the code, it is also possible to specify all the individual border properties in
one property. This is called a shorthand property.
The border property is a shorthand for the following individual border properties:
- border-width
- border-style (required)
- border-color
