Force Non-Monospace Font into Fixed Width Using CSS

Question

Is there any way to force a font to be monospaced using CSS?

By this I mean, using a non-monospace font, can you force the browser to render each character at a fixe

Answer 1

No, not unless it's an actual mono-spaced font.

Answer 2

I've done a verry pretty thing sometimes for countdowns:

html:

<div class="counter">
    <span class="counter-digit counter-digit-0">2</span>
    <span class="counter-digit counter-digit-1">4</span>
    <span class="counter-digit counter-digit-divider">/</span>
    <span class="counter-digit counter-digit-2">5</span>
    <span class="counter-digit counter-digit-3">7</span>
</div>

scss:

$digit-width: 18px;
.counter {

    text-align: center;
    font-size: $digit-width;

    position: relative;

    width : $digit-width * 4.5;
    margin: 0 auto;
    height: 48px;
}
.counter-digit {

    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    width: $digit-width;
    height: 48px;
    line-height: 48px;
    padding: 0 1px;

    &:nth-child(1) { left: 0; text-align: right; }
    &:nth-child(2) { left: $digit-width * 1; text-align: left;}
    &:nth-child(3) { left: $digit-width * 2; text-align: center; width: $digit-width / 2} // the divider (/)
    &:nth-child(4) { left: $digit-width * 2.5; text-align: right;}
    &:nth-child(5) { left: $digit-width * 3.5; text-align: left;}
}