1.6

Layout properties
Colors and fonts make an important contribution to the look and feel of your template. See
"Colors" on page192 and "Fonts" on page196.
Text and paragraphs have a number of formatting options that are not available for other
elements: font styles and line height, for example. See "Styling text and paragraphs" on
page177.
Boxes and a number of other elements can have a background color and/or background image;
see "Background color and/or image" on page188.
Several elements, such as boxes, images, paragraphs, and tables, can have a border; see
"Border" on page189.
Boxes, images, tables, text and other elements can be rotated; see "Rotating elements" on
page183.
Spacing (padding and margin) helps to position elements relative to other elements in the
template; see "Spacing" on page199.
The best way to position elements depends on the output channel for which the template is
intended; see "How to position elements" on page181.
The locale setting influences how dates, numbers and amounts of money are displayed; see
"Locale" on page198.
Styling templates with CSS files
The Layout toolbar and the Format menu offer many possibilities to style every piece of a
template. However, styling every single element, one after another, is a lot of work and, more
importantly, can result in a template with a messy mix of styles that isn’t easy to maintain and
lacks consistent design. Therefore the preferred way to style templates is with CSS: Cascading
Style Sheets.
The basic idea behind CSS is to separate the structure and contents of a (HTML) document as
much as possible from the presentation of that document.
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