Slightlymore » CSS

Useful glossaries for web designers and developers

Clinton Montague — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:26:42 +0000

Another glossary I’m afraid, but you can never have too many of them. This one on Smashing Magazine covers everything from typography to marketing, CSS to print design and Twitter to even higher level things such as software development. There are loads of links to all over the intertubes, so if you’ve got a spare moment, head over to this article and get reading!

Everything you need to know about the !important CSS declaration

Clinton Montague — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:31:14 +0000

It’s all too easy to use !important in your CSS to override styles. But do you really know what it means, or more importantly how and why it works? When will it not work? This great write up will try to explain all of the nuances of this overused and (in my opinion) seldom properly-used declaration.

20+ Wicked proof of concepts for better use of jQuery/CSS

Clinton Montague — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:42:24 +0000

Normally I’m not a fan of putting those my five million favourite posts about stuff, but this one really does show off some great techniques. Some of the linked articles are a bit contrived, and personally I can’t think of a use for them (except show-off-ery), but there are some real gems in there, like how to make a blurry background effect using jQuery.

HTML Forms: The Right Way(s)

Clinton Montague — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:30:48 +0000

There are almost too many ‘right’ ways to create forms using HTML and CSS. You could use definition lists, fully semantic fieldsets and labels, paragraphs, the possibilities are almost endless. Just no tables, please! Raleigh web design & development has written a great post detailing a few of the numerous ‘right’ ways of laying out your forms.

Override Inline Styles with CSS

Clinton Montague — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:12:31 +0000

Blue sky thinking, thinking outside the box and other nasty business phrases could easily be used to describe this technique. Usually, we use inline styling to override a rule in the stylesheet, this article on CSS tricks shows how to override inline styles using a stylesheet. Like all the best tricks out there, it’s just too simple. Naturally though, it doesn’t work in IE6.

Progressive Enhancement: What It Is, And How To Use It?

Clinton Montague — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:00:00 +0000

Progressive enhancement. Another of those web buzz words. One that I’m guilty of using. But what does it actually mean? More importantly, how do you do it? What is it for? Why should you use it? Is it difficult? All very good questions, all answered in this new post on Smashing Magazine.

The art of CSS positioning

Clinton Montague — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:05:15 +0000

As any new web developer (or a developer dabbling with CSS for the first time) will know, positioning elements with CSS can really make your head hurt. Should it be relative, absolute, fixed? And where are the coordinated relative to? This post by Rob MacKay explains each positioning method in detail, and definitely worth reading. Even if you’re a CSS guru, I reckon that you’ll pick up or remember something that you’d forgotten about or didn’t know.

CSS Naked Day

Clinton Montague — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:12:10 +0000

What a bloomin’ marvellous idea. On CSS naked day (9th April this year), you might notice a lot of websites loose thier styling. It’s the brain child of Dustin Diaz, and it’s aim is to help us all to write more semantic (X)HTML. By considering the design with no CSS, it forces us to write better and better structured markup. Will you be joining in this year?

Create a unique gallery by using z-index and jQuery

Clinton Montague — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:43:37 +0000

Quite an interesting post about creating (another) image gallery using jQuery. This one is not another of those lightbox clones though. This one uses a clever combination of z-index and movement to create the effect of looking through a stack of photographs as you would if they were in your hand. I don’t think that I’ll be using this particular style of gallery any time soon, but it’s definitely worth a look – I love the thinking behind it.

10 fixes that solve IE6 problems

Clinton Montague — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:12:30 +0000

As you may know, I’m a big fan of not using CSS hacks. They clutter up your stylesheets making them unreadable and very hard to maintain. This article from sitepoint explains how to nudge (surprise surprise) IE6 into displaying your pages correctly without having to use hacks or IE specific stylesheets. Definitely worth a read.