CategoryCSS

April 21, 2020 — In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about running online workshops. How can a traditional event adapt when participants can’t attend in person? Drew McLellan talks to Rachel Andrew to find out. Read more…

April 13, 2020 — In this eighth issue of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explain how learning about American graphic designer and typographer Herb Lubalin has transformed his approach to typography on the web. How can we combine elements to develop powerful headers and calls to action? How do we use pre-formatted HTML text, and the text element in SVG for precise control over type? How can we optimise SVGs and make SVG text accessible? In this article, we’ll explore just that. Read more…

March 23, 2020 — In this seventh instalment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explore how American art director and graphic designer Otto Storch inspires his designs for the web. How do we use CSS Shapes to go beyond basic shapes to add energy to our designs? How do we use rotations on text for extra impact? How can we use mirroring and reflections to add interest to a design? In this article, we’ll explore just that. Read more…

March 19, 2020 — Houdini, an umbrella term for the collection of browser APIs, aims to bring significant improvements to the web development process and the development of CSS standards in general. Frontend developers will be able to extend the CSS with new features using JavaScript, hook into CSS rendering engine and tell the browser how to apply CSS during a render process. Houdini’s browser support is improving and some APIs are available for use today, so it’s a good time to become familiar with them and experiment. We are going to take a look at each part of Houdini, its current browser support and see how they can be used today using progressive enhancement. Read more…

March 4, 2020 — Around the web and within the CSS Working Group, there has been some discussion about whether we should specify a version of CSS — perhaps naming it CSS4. In this article, Rachel Andrew rounds up some of the pros and cons of doing so, and asks for your feedback on the suggestion. Read more…

March 2, 2020 — In this sixth instalment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explore how British art director Neville Brody and in particular his work on The Face Magazine inspires his designs for the web. How do we use blend modes to add depth to our designs? How do we use vertical text for impact? How can we use clipping paths to bring in character and energy to a design? In this article, Andrew Clarke will explore just that. Read more…

February 24, 2020 — In this article, Blessing Krofegha introduces Tailwind CSS, a CSS library that gives you all of the building blocks you need to build bespoke designs without opinionated styles. With Tailwind CSS, you get to create the components that suit what you want or what you are working on. These components can be created by harnessing the power of the utility-first prowess of Tailwind CSS. You’ll also learn how to seamlessly set up Tailwind CSS in a React project. Read more…

February 12, 2020 — In a new series, Rachel Andrew breaks down the CSS Grid Layout specification. This time, Rachel Andrew will learn how to use the grid-template-areas property to define placement on the grid and find out how the property really works. If you haven’t used this layout method before, give it a try. We find that it is a lovely way to experiment with layouts and often use it when prototyping a layout — even if for one reason or another we will ultimately use a different method for the production version. Read more…

February 5, 2020 — In this article, Dan Halliday reviews the standard approach to creating animated flip cards, and introduces an improved method which solves its sizing problem. You’re going to build a flip card grid with some CSS basics — transforms, flex, and grid. Dan will cover: how flip cards are usually implemented using absolute positioning, the sizing problem that absolute positioning introduces, and a general solution for automatic sizing of overlaid content. Let’s dig in! Read more…

January 10, 2020 — In a new series, Rachel Andrew breaks down the CSS Grid Layout specification. This time, we take a look at how to use the grid lines to place items. The other methods Rachel will show you in future articles are alternate ways to specify your layout, but are based on the grid created by numbered lines. But for today, here you will find pretty much all you need to know about grid lines! Read more…