Create Shaped Avatars With CSS and Webkit In case you haven’t noticed, square avatars are so 2010. These days circles are all the rage. Every app worth its salt, from Path to Basecamp, is jumping on board this fad and waving goodbye to the squares who are stuck in the past. Ever the forward thinker, I asked myself, “what’s next?” Let’s look beyond squares and circles and into the future of the avatar! Using CSS and Webkit, we can use pretty much any shape as the mask for an avatar. Warning: Webkit Only Today’s project is merely a fun look forward at a design trend that you’ll no doubt see pop up as CSS masking improves in the future. Method 1: Webkit Masks The first method that we’re going to use is pretty straightforward. Grab Two Images To begin, you need two images. Once you have the avatar picked out, it’s time to build your mask. Keep in mind that things will go smoother if your photo and mask are as close in size as possible. Implementing the CSS mask method is crazy easy. Demo That’s all there is to it! Hold the Phone
Revised Font Stack | A Way Back Serious efforts are being made to get more typeface choices on the web to enhance web typography. Still, most of us prefer web-safe fonts like: Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman and Arial. Though choices are limited, yet the number can be increased by exploring other pre-installed fonts. “… font stacks are ultimately design factors, and should be scrutinized as such.” Baskerville, Garamond and Palatino have already been used a few times to create font-stacks that inspire. I’ve selected 10 popular typefaces, serif and sans-serif, each from the survey. MicrosoftTahoma, Verdana, Segoe, sans-serif;Microsoft.com will be (in most cases) rendered in Verdana on Mac, and in Tahoma on Windows. Times New RomanIf we look at the above snapshots taken from Sushi & Robots’ about page, we will find that Palatino and Georgia have different x-height (and weight) than Baskerville and Garamond. I’ve created a font-stack for each typeface while considering the font share table statistics.
How nth-child Works There is a CSS selector, really a pseudo-selector, called nth-child. Here is an example of using it: What the above CSS does, is select every third list item inside unordered lists. That is, the 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, etc. But how does that work? And what other kinds of things can you do with nth-child? It boils down to what is in between those parentheses. nth-child accepts two keywords in that spot: even and odd. As seen in the first example, nth-child also accepts expressions in between those parentheses. Let's get back to the "3n+3" from the original example though. (3 x 0) + 3 = 3 = 3rd Element (3 x 1) + 3 = 6 = 6th Element (3 x 2) + 3 = 9 = 9th Element etc. How about the :nth-child(2n+1)? (2 x 0) + 1 = 1 = 1st Element (2 x 1) + 1 = 3 = 3rd Element (2 x 2) + 1 = 5 = 5th Element etc. Hey wait! (3 x 0) = 0 = no match (3 x 1) = 3 = 3rd Element (3 x 2) = 6 = 6th Element (3 x 3) = 9 = 9th Element etc. So as you can see, the matches are exactly the same, no need for the "+3". Share On
Increasing the Clickable Area of Inline Links Demo It has been best practice for some time now to ensure that navigation links have appropriate padding. This makes clicking these links much easier, especially if you are on a mobile device. Here is an article, written four years ago, discussing this very idea. Why aren’t we taking this one step further? Links don’t only exist in menus, and inline links can be tricky to click accurately. Now keep in mind that this is only a thought. The trick is to be subtle with this technique; increase the click area enough that users don’t have to be 100% accurate, but don’t increase it too much so that the behavior becomes unexpected. Here is an example of what the CSS rule might look like: Notice the use of position: relative? What are your thoughts on this technique? Tweet this
Step by step CSS float tutorial Floatutorial takes you through the basics of floating elements such as images, drop caps, next and back buttons, image galleries, inline lists and multi-column layouts. General info Tutorial 1. Floating an image to the right Float an image to the right of a block of text and apply a border to the image. Tutorial 2. Float an image and caption to the right of a block of text and apply borders using Descendant Selectors. Tutorial 3. Float a series of images down the right side of the page, with content flowing beside them. Tutorial 4. Float a series of thumbnail images and captions to achieve an image gallery. Tutorial 5. Float a simple list into rollover "back" and next "buttons". Tutorial 6. Float a simple list, converting it into a horizontal navigation bar. Tutorial 7. Float a scaleable drop cap to the left, resize it and adjust line-heights to suit your needs. Tutorial 8. Float a left nav to achieve a two column layout with header and footer. Tutorial 9.
LESS « The Dynamic Stylesheet language CSS Click Events An article about different experimental approaches of employing click events using CSS only. It summarizes and shows some clever hacks and smart tricks. For the last few years, we’ve been witnessing the wonderful expansion of front-end languages especially HTML with the HTML5 specifications and CSS with the CSS Level 3 specifications. We can now do a lot of stuff we couldn’t have done without JavaScript or images before, like rounded corners, gradients, responsive layouts, grid stuff, transparency in colors, and so much more. But one thing we’ve always been missing is the possibility to handle click events with CSS. Anyway, as of today, CSS doesn’t provide any official way to handle a click event in CSS. Disclaimer This blog post is about showing the possibilities of CSS and some clever hacks. Plus, some of these techniques are not well supported by browsers, meaning it’s even more borderline; we intend to have some fun pushing the limits of CSS. Checkbox hack Aaaaah, the checkbox hack. Pros
CSS Overlay Techniques There are several techniques for creating overlays: from using an absolutely positioned element to outlines and pseudo-elements. In this article we are going to explore each technique's styles with their pros and cons. Design patterns, a set of best practices and techniques that aim to solve some of the most common design “problems”, are usually presented in the context of design principles. One of these design principles is the “Stay On Page” principle. This principle is based on the fact that page refreshes are disruptive to the user’s mental flow, causing what is known as “change blindness”, and that we need to be able to avoid breaking the visual flow of the user wherever and whenever we can. We can decide intelligently when to keep the user on the page and model his process. Lightweight overlays can be used for asking questions, obtaining input, introducing features, indicating progress, giving instructions, or revealing information. Technique #1: Absolutely positioned element
HTML5, CSS3, JS Demos, Creations and Experiments | CSSDeck Pure CSS GUI icons (experimental) An experiment that uses pseudo-elements to create 84 simple GUI icons using CSS and semantic HTML. Shared as an exercise in creative problem solving and working within constraints. This is not a “production ready” CSS icon set. Demo: Pure CSS GUI icons Known support: Firefox 3.5+, Safari 5+, Chrome 5+, Opera 10.6+. An exercise in constraint Several months ago I was experimenting with the creation of common GUI icons with CSS. Pseudo-elements provide many possibilities to developers interested in writing semantic HTML. Example code The technique behind this experiment is an expansion of the basic shape-creation that was used to make Pure CSS speech bubbles. The HTML is a basic unordered list of links. <ul><li class="power"><a href="#non">Power</a></li><li class="play"><a href="#non">Play</a></li><li class="stop"><a href="#non">Stop</a></li><li class="pause"><a href="#non">Pause</a></li></ul> Each icon uses its own set of styles.
Multiple Backgrounds and Borders with CSS 2.1 Using CSS 2.1 pseudo-elements to provide up to 3 background canvases, 2 fixed-size presentational images, and multiple complex borders for a single HTML element. This method of progressive enhancement works for all browsers that support CSS 2.1 pseudo-elements and their positioning. No CSS3 support required. Support: Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, Chrome 4+, Opera 10+, IE8+. How does it work? Essentially, you create pseudo-elements using CSS (:before and :after) and treat them similarly to how you would treat HTML elements nested within your target element. To provide multiple backgrounds and/or borders, the pseudo-elements are pushed behind the content layer and pinned to the desired points of the HTML element using absolute positioning. The pseudo-elements contain no true content and are absolutely positioned. What effects can be achieved? Most structural elements will contain child elements. Example code: multiple background images Each pseudo-element then has a repeated background-image set.
Coding Kung-fu: 35 Graphics Built Purely With CSS3 Look at the graphics below, awesome Photoshop works right? Nah, they’re created by CSS3. Yes, they’re completely “drawn” by CSS3! When we have seen enough CSS3 animations we thought those are all CSS3 can do as a potential Flash killer, but we’re wrong. Developers perhaps don’t satisfy with the fun of animation, so again, they push the boundaries of CSS3 to challenge the graphic editor’s realm. With this post comes 35 carefully crafted CSS3 graphics which even include something you wouldn’t relate with CSS3 like Apple iPhone, cartoon character Doraemon, and more surprises! You are strongly recommended to view these demos using the latest version of Safari or Developer version of Google Chrome. RSS Feed Icon RSS Feed Icon built with CSS3, exclusively from Hongkiat! Apple iMac Yeah my eyes also can’t believe that, but it’s iMac “assembled” purely with CSS3. Apple Keyboard It’s Apple Keyboard built with CSS3! Apple iPhone Oh, one more thing: iPhoneCSS3. Cherry Blossom Coffee Cup A tiring day? More
Quick Tip: The Multi-Column CSS3 Module For over six years, CSS3 columns have been available to us; yet, strangely, they're rarely utilized. Because they currently are only supported in Mozilla and Webkit-based browsers, this means that - again - no support in Internet Explorer. But that's okay! The world will not end if IE users see one longer paragraph. I'll show you how to use this helpful module in today's video quick tip. column-count: The desired number of columns for the element. Please note that we must prefix each property with the -webkit or -moz, accordingly; so: -webkit-column-count. Do you use CSS columns in your projects?
50+ Awesome CSS3 Techniques for Better Designs CSS3 is gaining momentum, despite the fact that the standard hasn’t even been finalized. There are hundreds of tutorials out there to teach designers how to use it, but unfortunately a lot of them cover the same ground. And some of the tutorials teach designers to do things that they might not think of as useful, though the techniques can usually be adapted to fit a project perfectly. Below are more than fifty awesome CSS3 tutorials. Many are strictly CSS and HTML based, while others also incorporate JavaScript. If you have a favorite technique or tutorial that’s not included below, please share it in the comments! Using CSS3 For Imageless Illustration Various new methods in CSS3 allow a number of very complex graphics to be created using pure CSS and no images. Pure CSS iPhone Illustration A mixture of borders, transforms and gradients to make an animated image of an iPhone. Creating The Opera Browser Logo in CSS3 A clean illustration of the Opera logo rendered using CSS3 techniques.