Tag tab-size

🔠 CSS tab-size — Controlling the Width of Tabs in Text

Make your code blocks, text files, and preformatted content look cleaner and more consistent.

🔹 What is tab-size?

The CSS tab-size property controls the width of tab characters (\t) in text. It’s especially useful when displaying:

  • Code blocks
  • <pre>formatted text
  • Monospaced fonts

By default, tabs may appear too wide or inconsistent across browsers. tab-size lets you standardize and control that appearance.

📘 Syntax

selector {
  tab-size: <number> | <length>;
}

Accepts:

  • Number: Number of space characters (e.g. 2, 4, 8)
  • Length: Custom length (e.g. 4ch, 2em)

✍️ Example: Formatting Code Snippets

<pre class="code-block">
function hello() {
	let name = "world";
	console.log("Hello, " + name);
}
</pre>
.code-block {
  font-family: monospace;
  tab-size: 2;
}

🧩 This will render each \t (tab) as 2 spaces wide, making the code block tighter and easier to read.

🖼️ Image 1: Visualizing Tab Sizes

Description:

  • Three stacked <pre> blocks showing identical code with tab-size: 2, 4, and 8.
  • The difference in indentation width is clearly shown.

🎯 Purpose: Show how tab-size affects visual spacing in text content.

🧠 Why Use tab-size?

Use CaseBenefit
Code editors or blog postsMake indentation consistent and readable
<pre> content or ASCII artMaintain visual structure
Markdown renderersDisplay tabs uniformly across browsers

🔄 Default Behavior vs Custom tab-size

Tab WidthLooks Like (Indented)
tab-size: 8→→→→→→→→ (wide tabs, default in many browsers)
tab-size: 4→→→→
tab-size: 2→→

✅ Smaller tab-size values improve readability in code-heavy pages.

✍️ Using tab-size with length

pre {
  tab-size: 3ch; /* Each tab equals 3 character widths */
}

You can use relative sizing based on font size or character width (em, ch, etc.).

🔄 Cross-Browser Support

  • ✅ Supported in all modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari.
  • 🛑 Not supported in very old versions of Internet Explorer.

✅ Summary

FeatureDescription
Propertytab-size
Applies toElements with tab characters (usually <pre>, code)
Common valuesNumbers like 2, 4, 8
Best used withMonospaced fonts and code content

🔚 Final Thought

The tab-size property may be small, but it plays a big role in creating readable, neat, and accessible text—especially in technical and educational content. A few tweaks can make your content feel clean and intentional.