css at rule descriptor
`unicode-range` CSS at-rule descriptor
The unicode-range CSS descriptor sets the specific range of characters to be used from a font defined using the @font-face at-rule and made available for use on the current page. If the page doesn’t use any character in this range, the font is not downloaded; if it uses at least one, the whole font is downloaded.
Syntax
/* <unicode-range> values */
unicode-range: U+26; /* single code point */
unicode-range: U+0-7F;
unicode-range: U+0025-00FF; /* code point range */
unicode-range: U+4??; /* wildcard range */
unicode-range: U+0025-00FF, U+4??; /* multiple values */
Values
- single code point
- : A single Unicode character code point, for example
U+26.
- : A single Unicode character code point, for example
- code point range
- : A range of Unicode code points. So for example,
U+0025-00FFmeans include all characters in the rangeU+0025toU+00FF.
- : A range of Unicode code points. So for example,
- wildcard range
- : A range of Unicode code points containing wildcard characters, that is using the
'?'character, so for exampleU+4??means include all characters in the rangeU+400toU+4FF.
- : A range of Unicode code points containing wildcard characters, that is using the
Description
The purpose of this descriptor is to allow the font resources to be segmented so that a browser only needs to download the font resource needed for the text content of a particular page. For example, a site with many localizations could provide separate font resources for English, Greek and Japanese. For users viewing the English version of a page, the font resources for Greek and Japanese fonts wouldn’t need to be downloaded, saving bandwidth.
Formal definition
Formal syntax
Examples
Using a different font for a single character
In this example, we create a single <div> element, with a text string that includes an ampersand that we want to style with a different font. To make it obvious, we will use a sans-serif font, Helvetica, for the text, and a serif font, Times New Roman, for the ampersand.
In the CSS we are in effect defining a completely separate @font-face that only includes a single character in it, meaning that only this character will be styled with this font. We could also have done this by wrapping the ampersand in a <span> and applying a different font just to that, but that is an extra element and rule set.
HTML
<div>Me & You = Us</div>
CSS
@font-face {
font-family: "Ampersand";
src: local("Times New Roman");
unicode-range: U+26;
}
div {
font-size: 4em;
font-family: "Ampersand", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}