Margin

At the very outside of the box are the margins. Each margin's size can be set individualy with the properties margin-top, margin-bottom, margin-left and margin-right, or you can use the shorthand property margin to specify all four margins together. The syntax of the shorthand property is:

margin: top right bottom left

If there are only:

• three values: then the left margin is set equal to the right margin;
• two values: then the left margin is set equal to the right margin, and the bottom margin is set equal to the top margin;
• one value: then all margins are made equal.

Prince expands the margin properties with margin-inside and margin-outside, defining the margin respectively on the inside or outside of a spread: inside is on the right when used on a left-facing page, and on left on a right-facing page; outside is on the left when used on a left-facing page, and on the right on a right-facing page.

Always keep in mind that margin-top and margin-bottom of blocks are combined (i.e. "collapsed") into a single margin according to a possibly rather complex behaviour known as margin collapsing.

Padding

The property padding defines the padding sinside the box model. Each padding's size can be set individualy with the properties padding-top, padding-bottom, padding-left and padding-right, or you can use the shorthand property padding to specify all four paddings together. The syntax of the shorthand property is:

padding: top right bottom left

If there are only:

• three values: then the left padding is set equal to the right padding;
• two values: then the left padding is set equal to the right padding, and the bottom padding is set equal to the top padding;
• one value: then all paddings are made equal.

Border

The border of a box can be styled with several border properties. The borders can either be individually styled with border-top, border-right, border-bottom and border-left, or the shorthand property border can be used to style all four borders of the box in the same way.

To style the borders, the border-color, border-style and border-width properties can be used. For each of them, also top, right, bottom and left variants are available to style each border separately.

The property border-radius property can be used for styling rounded corners.

The border-clip property splits the borders into parts along the border edge - the first part is visible, the second one is invisible, the third part is visible, etc.

Background

The background of an element can be styled with the background-color and the background-image properties, or with the shorthand property background.

Various standard properties are available to position the background, to clip it or to determine whether, and how it should be repeated. Prince extends control on the background with the prince-background-image-resolution property, used to control image size in print (see Image Size in Print).