BasicConcepts

Basic Concepts

Introduction

Paper is a minimalistic styling css for websites looking for a print-like approach. Everything is designed to take advantage of the simple, traditional text-based html tags, using typography and whitespace to build sections.

General approach

Paper is not made to use advanced scripting languages to create new elements, fancy animations or extravagant styles. Aiming for paper quality, it focuses on text, typography and whitespace. All of this is already present in the very basic html tags that we have known for decades now, and with the aid of css we can reach high, print-like quality.

Paper is then designed to style the most frequently used html tags, especially those which are text based. Structure tags like divs or newer html5 ones like article, nav or aside are not taken into consideration; they are left to the user for styling, if necessary.

Furthermore, Paper is structured to use a minimal set of element classes, in order to keep the html as clean as possible.

Specialization

As stated, Paper styles basic html elements without requiring particular structures or classes. Some results, though, are simply not achievable through html elements alone, nor are they technically part of the structure of the document.

In order to achieve such results, Paper sparingly uses the concept of specialization classes. These are standard element classes, styled through css in order to achieve the desired result over a standard element. Some of such classes are aimed at specific tags; others to any tag, instead.

You will find such classes explained in the wiki, where they can be applied.

Defaults

There are very few defaults in Paper. These are:

• Screen-centered body.
• Custom default font, slightly bigger than traditional fonts, in order to improve ligibility.
• Css trasition on all properties-