1.8

Local formatting versus style sheets
There are in general two ways to style elements:
l
Using local formatting. Local formatting means styling an element directly, using a
toolbar button or one of the formatting dialogs.
l
Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Style sheets can determine the appearance of
individual elements, as well as the appearance of elements that have the same class or
HTML tag.
Whether applied through style sheets or through local formatting, behind the scenes all layout
properties in the Designer are CSS properties. When you format an element locally, an inline
style rule is added to the element.
Note that where local formatting conflicts with a formatting rule for the same element in one of
the style sheets, the local formatting rule gets priority; the rule in the style sheet will be ignored.
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 the facing page.
Layout properties
Colors and fonts make an important contribution to the look and feel of your template. See
"Colors" on page228 and "Fonts" on page232.
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209.
Boxes and a number of other elements can have a background color and/or background image;
see "Background color and/or image" on page224.
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