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The CSS Chamber of Measures

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Living collection · CSS-001 to CSS-028

The units CSS has certified and almost nobody weighs, one per page.

Zero-widths, quarter millimeters, gradians from the French Revolution: every unit gets its standard, its calibration certificate and, whenever the physics of the page allows, a live demonstration in pure CSS — measured with the unit itself.

Open the standards archive Why this way The standard

Drawers

The seven drawers these standards are filed in.

The whole archive

  1. CSS-001 ch The width of the digit zero — forty of them make a good line of text. Typographic uncommon
  2. CSS-002 ex The height of the lowercase x — typography's middle line, turned into a unit. Typographic forgotten
  3. CSS-003 cap The height of the capitals — the top of the H, measured by the font itself. Typographic forgotten
  4. CSS-004 ic The width of the water ideograph — the invisible grid of the Japanese page. Typographic forgotten
  5. CSS-005 lh The height of one line of the element itself — rulers that match the text. Typographic forgotten
  6. CSS-006 rlh The root element's line — the same lh, immune to context. Typographic forgotten
  7. CSS-007 Q A quarter of a millimeter — the unit Japanese typography brought into the standard. Absolute forgotten
  8. CSS-008 mm The metric system's millimeter, with the caveat that a screen is not paper. Absolute uncommon
  9. CSS-009 cm The certified centimeter: 96px divided by 2.54, not always a centimeter. Absolute uncommon
  10. CSS-010 in The 96-pixel inch — the link that ties the whole system together. Absolute uncommon
  11. CSS-011 pt The typographic point: 1/72 of an inch, longtime resident of the type shops. Absolute common
  12. CSS-012 pc The pica: twelve points at once, inherited from the composing rooms. Absolute forgotten
  13. CSS-013 px The reference pixel — the honest lie that props up all the others. Absolute common
  14. CSS-014 vmin One percent of the viewport's smaller side — the square that always fits. Viewport uncommon
  15. CSS-015 vmax One percent of the larger side — the unit that embraces overflow. Viewport forgotten
  16. CSS-016 vi · vb The viewport measured by the axes of writing, not the sides of the screen. Viewport forgotten
  17. CSS-017 svh · lvh · dvh The phone's three heights: with the bar, without it, and the one that follows the gesture. Viewport uncommon
  18. CSS-018 cqw · cqh One percent of the query container — width, at last, made local. Container uncommon
  19. CSS-019 cqi · cqb The container measured by the axes of writing — the logical pair of cqw and cqh. Container uncommon
  20. CSS-020 cqmin · cqmax The container's smaller and larger sides, ready to decide on their own. Container forgotten
  21. CSS-021 fr A fraction of the leftover space — the unit that only exists in grid. Grid and fraction common
  22. CSS-022 deg The everyday degree: 360 to the turn, the dominant dialect of angles. Angles and time common
  23. CSS-023 grad The French Revolution's 400 gradians, kept in the standard out of metric loyalty. Angles and time forgotten
  24. CSS-024 rad The mathematicians' radian: 2π to the turn, built to talk to sine and cosine. Angles and time forgotten
  25. CSS-025 turn The full turn as a unit — half a turn is written 0.5turn and needs no footnote. Angles and time uncommon
  26. CSS-026 s · ms The second and the millisecond — the official time of transitions and animations. Angles and time common
  27. CSS-027 dpi Dots per inch — the density of ink, and now of glass. Resolution forgotten
  28. CSS-028 dppx Dots per CSS pixel — density spoken in the stylesheet's own tongue. Resolution uncommon