In Modern CSS Layouts, Part 1: The Essential Characteristics, you learned that modern, CSS-based web sites should be progressively enhanced, adaptive to diverse users, modular, efficient and typographically rich. Now that you know what characterizes a modern CSS web site, how do you build one? Here are dozens of essential techniques and tools to learn and use to achieve the characteristics of today’s most successful CSS-based web pages.
Just as in the previous article, we’re not going to be talking about design trends and styles; these styles are always changing. Instead, we’re focusing on the specific techniques that you need to know to create modern CSS-based web pages of any style. For each technique or tool, we’ll indicate which of the five characteristics it helps meet. To keep this shorter than an encyclopedia, we’ll also just cover the basics of each technique, then point you to some useful, hand-picked resources to learn the full details.
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There is little doubt that WordPress is one of the most popular blogging and content management platforms out there today. This is not an article about WordPress, though, but rather a more general musing on one of its thought-provoking taglines: “Code Is Poetry.”
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CSS3 is probably the hottest trend in web design right now, allowing developers the opportunity to implement a number of solutions into their projects with some very straightforward CSS while avoiding having to resort to nonsemantic markup, extra images, and complex JavaScript. Unfortunately, it’s not a surprise that Internet Explorer, even in its most recent version, still does not support the majority of the properties and features introduced in CSS3.
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CSS’ barrier to entry is extremely low, mainly due to the nature of its syntax. Being clear and easy to understand, the syntax makes sense even to the inexperienced Web designer. It’s so simple, in fact, that you could style a simple CSS-based website within a few hours of learning it.
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Ah, the ubiquitous CSS sprites — one of the few web design techniques that was able to bypass “trend” status almost instantly, planting itself firmly into the category of best practice CSS. Although it didn’t really take off until well after A List Apart explained and endorsed it, it was discussed as a CSS solution as early as July, 2003 by Petr Stanícek.
Most web developers today have a fairly strong grasp of this technique, and there have been countless tutorials and articles written on it. In almost every one of those tutorials, the claim is made that designers and developers should be implementing CSS sprites in order to minimize HTTP requests and save valuable kilobytes. This technique has been taken so far that many sites, including Amazon, now use mega sprites.
Is this much-discussed benefit really worthwhile? Are designers jumping on the CSS sprite bandwagon without a careful consideration of all the factors? In this article, I’m going to discuss some of the pros and cons of using CSS sprites, focusing particularly on the use of “mega” sprites, and why such use of sprites could in many cases be a waste of time.
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There has been an increasing and sincere interest in typography on the web over the last few years. Most websites rely on text to convey their messages, so it’s not a surprise that text is treated with utmost care. In this article, we’ll look at some useful techniques and clever effects that use the power of style sheets and some features of the upcoming CSS Text Level 3 specification, which should give Web designers finer control over text.
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Although CSS is generally considered a simple and straightforward language, sometimes it requires creativity, skill and a bit of experimentation. The good news is that designers and developers worldwide often face similar problems and choose to share their insights and workarounds with the wider community.
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CSS3 makes a designer’s work easier because they’re able to spend less time hacking their CSS and HTML code to work in IE and more time crafting their design. It is the future of web design and can be used today.
This article will hopefully show you to care a little less about making everything pixel perfect in IE. It will inspire you to spend more time making your designs exquisite in the rest of the browsers while serving up a working and perfectly accessible website for IE.
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CSS3 is coming. Although the browser support of CSS 3 is still very limited, many designers across the globe experiment with new powerful features of the language, using graceful degradation for users with older browsers and using the new possibilites of CSS3 for users with modern browsers.
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