CSS glossary entries for ‘L’

Last child of type selector: The Last child of type selector (E:last-of-type) is a CSS ‘pseudo-class selector’ which targets any element which is the last of its type within its immediate container. So for example, if a <section> container began with <h2> immediately followed by an <img> and then by a series of paragraphs, the following selector would target only the last of those paragraphs: p:last-of-type. This selector is less fragile than the ‘:last-child’ selector, because the selection will continue to work no matter how many non-targeted elements are dynamically added to its container, before or after it.
Last child selector: The last child selector (E:last-child) is a CSS ‘pseudo-class selector’ which matches the last element in a container. It is extremely useful for selecting the totals in tabular data, i.e. for selecting the last row in a table and the last data cells in table rows.
Layout box: A layout box is a rectangular portion of the display screen occupied by a CSS selection and is the fundamental conceptual unit for CSS-controlled web page layout. Layout boxes are typically, but not exclusively, associated with a selected HTML element. The most obvious layout box which is not directly associated with an HTML element is the ‘viewport’, i.e. the rectangle which bounds the ‘work area’ of a desktop browser window or the display area of a mobile device. CSS provides several different types of layout box and each type has a distinct ‘box model’. The most commonly used layout boxes are the ‘block boxes’, ‘inline boxes’, ‘float boxes’, ‘table boxes’ and ‘flexible boxes’.
Layout engine: See ‘rendering engine’
left: The left property is a CSS ‘position’ value used to determine the offset distance between the left edge of a ‘positioned element’ and the left edge of its ‘containing element’.
letter-spacing: The letter-spacing property is a CSS text property which adjusts the space between letters in a selected bit of text. It should be rarely used, since it messes with the ‘kerning’ of fonts, i.e. the character spacing built-in to the design of a given font.
line-break: The line-break property is an experimental CSS property which determines how, or whether, to break lines in a given area of a web page. Do not use without first checking support levels at caniuse.com.
line-height: The line-height property is a CSS text property which sets the size of the ‘leading’ or whitespace between lines of text, i.e. the distance between the bottom of the ‘descenders’ on one line and the top of the ascenders on the next line. It should be specified as a unit-less proportion of the line-height, so that when the visible text scales the leading between lines scales in exact proportion.
list-style: The list-style property is a CSS ‘shorthand property’ which enables the designer to specify all of the ‘list styling properties’ in a single statement. It is typically used in preference to the individual properties.
list-style-image: The list-style-image property is a CSS property which identifies the URL of the image which should be used as the marker on selected list items.
list-style-position: The list-style-position property is a CSS property which determines whether list item markers are positioned inside or outside of the selected list item layout boxes.
list-style-type: The list-style-type property is a CSS property which specifies the type of marker which should be used on selected list items, e.g. symbols, arabic numerals, roman numerals, upper or lowercase letters, etc.