After adding a style to the style sheet, you use the tools in the Style Editor to format the attributes for the style. The attributes that are available for change depend on the style type. Font attributes are available for styles that affect text, but are not available for graphics, such as image and horizontal line styles. Styles initially inherit their attributes from the browser, the document body style, and a default style of the same element. You can assign your own values for inherited and browser-dependent attributes; however, be aware that modifying these settings either breaks the inheritance or replaces the default settings for the browser. See Style Inheritance for more information about inheriting element attributes.

When you create a new style for elements, such as paragraphs, headings, tables, lists, images, and so on, most of the initial formatting attributes in the toolbars appear blank or not selected; this is because these attributes are either inherited from another style or are browser-dependent settings. Browser-dependent settings have no specific values assigned as they vary between browsers. For example, the following occurs when you add a new heading 1 style:

• The Font Family list box in the toolbar is blank because that attribute is inherited from the document body style (or from the browser's body element if no document body style is defined).
   
• The Font Size list box in the toolbar is blank because each browser interprets the font size for heading 1 text as a certain percentage of the document body style; for example, many browsers use a 200% font size for text tagged as a heading 1 element.
   
• The Before and After fields in the Spacing dialog box are blank because those values vary depending on the browser.
   
• The Bold attribute in the toolbar is the only attribute that is selected.

Note: You can use the Style Inspector toolpane to view the source of the formatting for a selected style.

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