1.7

Using colors in style sheets
It is highly recommended to use style sheets in templates right from the start. Even more so if
the communications are going to be output to different output channels, or if they consist of
different sections (for example, a covering letter followed by a policy). Using CSS with
templates allows a consistent look and feel to be applied. A style sheet can change the look of
multiple elements, making it unnecessary to format each and every element in the template,
time and again, when the company's layout preferences change. See "Styling templates with
CSS files" on page187.
In style sheets, you can color every type of element that has a CSS color property, such as
color, background-color or border-color. Use the color's name as it is defined in the
Designer, or any legal color value: a valid color name (see color names on w3schools),
hexadecimal color code (see w3school's color picker), RGB color value, for example rgb
(216,255,170) or CMYK color value, for example cmyk(15%, 0%, 33%, 0%).
The following CSS rule applies MyColor, which is a custom color (see "Defining colors, spot
colors and tints" on page211), to the text of all paragraphs:
p {
color: MyColor;
}
CMYK colors
You may use the custom cmyk() CSS function to assign a CMYK color to any element, or a
series of elements. The following example assigns a steel blue color as a background for all H1
elements:
h1 {
background-color: cmyk(33%, 17%, 0%, 20%);
}
Coloring text
Instead of using a style sheet (see above), you can color text locally:
1. Select text or an HTML element that contains text (see "Selecting an element" on
page121).
2.
On the menu, select Format > Color, or click the black triangle on the Text color toolbar
button.
Page 213