Figures & captions

Scale model of the Eiffel tower in Parc Mini-France

HTML doesn't have an element that allows to insert a figure with a caption. It was once proposed (see HTML3), but never made it into HTML4. Here is one way to simulate such a figure element:

 
   height="200" alt="Eiffel tower" />
 
Scale model of the
   Eiffel tower in Parc Mini-France

Then in the style sheet you use the class "figure" to format the figure the way you want. For example, to float the figure to the right, in a space equal to 25% of the width of the surrounding paragraphs, these rules will do the trick:

div.figure {
 float: right;
 width: 25%;
 border: thin silver solid;
 margin: 0.5em;
 padding: 0.5em;
}
div.figure p {
 text-align: center;
 font-style: italic;
 font-size: smaller;
 text-indent: 0;
}

In fact, only the first two declarations (float and width) are essential, the rest is just for decoration.