CSS - Text

Text

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CSS3 text | CSS3 text decoration | CSS3 fonts

Here are the tests for the Text and Text Decoration modules.

This is the desktop table. See also the mobile table.

Last major update on 10 September 2013.

Method or property	Internet Explorer					Firefox			Safari	Opera					Chrome
Method or property	7	8	9	10	11	23 Win	23 Mac	23 Linux	6	12 Win	12 Mac	12 Linux	16 Win	16 Mac	29 Win	29 Mac	29 Linux
font-style Italic	Yes					Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
font-style Italic
font-variant Small-caps	Yes					Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
font-variant Small-caps
font-weight Bold, in several flavours	Basic		Yes			Basic	Yes	Basic	Yes	Basic	Yes	Basic	Basic	Yes	Basic	Yes	Basic
font-weight Bold, in several flavours	Basic Browser only supports `normal` and `bold`, even though it has a font with more than two weights installed. I do not have a good font for Linux, so I can’t test it beyond the two standard weights.
hyphens To hyphenate a text Prefixed	No			Yes			Yes		Yes	No			Incomplete		Incomplete
hyphens To hyphenate a text Prefixed	Incomplete Browser supports `none` but not `auto`.
Method or property	Internet Explorer					Firefox			Safari	Opera					Chrome
Method or property	7	8	9	10	11	23 Win	23 Mac	23 Linux	6	12 Win	12 Mac	12 Linux	16 Win	16 Mac	29 Win	29 Mac	29 Linux
letter-spacing	Yes					Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
letter-spacing	I read, but did not test, that there are sub-pixel bugs in at least IE9 and lower.
overflow-wrap	No					No			No	Yes					Yes
overflow-wrap
tab-size To set the size of the tabs	No					-moz-			No	-o-			Yes		Yes
tab-size To set the size of the tabs
text-align To align the text left, center, or right	Incomplete					Yes			Yes	Incomplete			Yes		Yes
text-align To align the text left, center, or right	Incomplete Browser does not support `start` and `end`. No browser supports `start end`.
text-align-last To align the last line of text. Prefixed	No					Yes			No	No					No

Method or property	Internet Explorer					Firefox			Safari	Opera					Chrome
Method or property	7	8	9	10	11	23 Win	23 Mac	23 Linux	6	12 Win	12 Mac	12 Linux	16 Win	16 Mac	29 Win	29 Mac	29 Linux
text-decoration	Yes					Yes			Yes	Almost			Yes		Yes
text-decoration	`text-decoration: blink`: Firefox dropped support between 19 and 23. Opera 12 still supports it, but 15 and up don’t.
text-decoration-line, -color, and -style Prefixed	No					Yes			No	No					No
text-decoration-line, -color, and -style Prefixed
text-indent	Incomplete	Yes				Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
text-indent	IE7 makes the indentation in the percentual test far too large. Not sure if this is a bug, but it’s certainly something to keep in mind. The `each-line` and `hanging` keywords are not supported.
text-justify	?????????					No			No	No					No
text-justify	I saw something happening here in IE in my previous test round. If I look really, really hard, I can still see something happening in my current IE8. But IE9-11 don’t show a trace of supporting this property. This is what I found last time: IE7 and up support `distribute` and the non-standard `newspaper`. IE8 added support for `inter-ideograph` and the `-ms-` prefix. So from IE8 on the three values are supported prefixed and unprefixed. All six values do exactly the same.
Method or property	Internet Explorer					Firefox			Safari	Opera					Chrome
Method or property	7	8	9	10	11	23 Win	23 Mac	23 Linux	6	12 Win	12 Mac	12 Linux	16 Win	16 Mac	29 Win	29 Mac	29 Linux
text-shadow Create a text-shadow.	No			Yes		Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
text-shadow Create a text-shadow.
text-transform	almost					Yes			almost	almost					almost
text-transform	Almost Browser does not support `full-width`.
white-space To remove text wrapping or to make an element behave like a pre	Incomplete	Yes				Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
	IE5.5 only supports `nowrap`. IE6 and 7 do not support `pre-wrap` and `pre-line`.
word-spacing	Yes					Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
word-spacing	No browser supports percentages.
word-wrap	Yes					Yes			Yes	Yes					Yes
word-wrap
Method or property	Internet Explorer					Firefox			Safari	Opera					Chrome
Method or property	7	8	9	10	11	23 Win	23 Mac	23 Linux	6	12 Win	12 Mac	12 Linux	16 Win	16 Mac	29 Win	29 Mac	29 Linux

Not supported

The following properties are not supported by any browser.

Not tested

There are no tests for line-break, word-break, text-underline-position, and text-emphasis because they only apply to East Asian languages, which I can’t read.

Example texts

The most common example text is this one:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Oh, how that fox jumped, quick and brown, while the dog never reacted because he was so very lazy.

In some tests I use a Dutch example text, because Dutch, like German, allows for unlimited word concatenation (even though it gets a bit silly after 25 or so characters).

Though a bit contrived, the example is valid Dutch, and it contains “Rijksluchtvaartdienstweerschepenpersoneel ” — the word I was taught as a child is the longest in Dutch.

Het onderafdelingshoofd Rijksluchtvaartdienstweerschepenpersoneel verontschuldigde zich voor de commissievergadering over de gereviseerde gelijkheidsbeginselencirculaire.
Dit geschiedde uit hoofde van zijn medeverantwoordelijkheid voor de functieomschrijvingswijzigingsproblematiek.

Browsers

Desktop browser test array 1.0; September 2013

IE7: Trident; On Windows Vista virtualization
IE 8, 9, and 11: Trident; On separate Windows 7 virtualizations
IE10: Trident; On Windows RT (Windows 8)
Firefox: Gecko; 23 on Linux; 23.0.1 on Windows 7 and Mac
Safari: WebKit; 6.0.5 on Mac
Opera 12: Presto; 12.16 Win7, Mac, and Linux
Opera 16: Blink; 16.0 Win7 and Mac
Chrome: Blink; 29 Win7, Mac, and Linux

Operating systems

Mac: MacBook Pro 17'' with OS 10.7.5; This is my main test station. It also runs all virtual Windows systems.
Windows Vista and 7: All downloaded from modern.ie. I use VirtualBox, and downloded the Windows 7 systems for all browsers but IE7, which runs on Vista.; The non-IE Windows browsers all run on the IE9/Win7 virtualization.
Windows RT: Microsoft Surface with Windows RT
Linux: Ubuntu 12.04 on pretty old hardware. Not fair for performance comparisons.