Adactio: Links—Tagged with css

Container Queries and Typography

I feel like we need a name for this era, when CSS started getting real good.

I think this is what I’ve been calling declarative design.

clamp() Calculator · Chris Burnell

Like a little mini Utopia:

Handy little tool for calculating viewport-based clamped values.

Patrick / articles / Is the developer experience on the Web so terrible?

Over the past 10 years or so, we’ve slowly but very surely transitioned to a state where frameworks are the norm, and I think it’s a problem.

I concur.

Use the frameworks and libraries that make sense for you to deliver the best UX possible. But also learn the web platform from the ground up. Take time to understand how web browsers work and render webpages. Learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript. And keep an eye, if you can, on the new things.

Henry From Online | How To Make a Website

Write meaningful HTML that communicates the structure of your document before any style or additional interactivity has loaded. Write CSS carefully, reason your methodology and stick to it, and feel empowered to skip frameworks. When it comes time to write JavaScript, write not too much, make sure you know what it all does, and above all, make sure the website works without it.

The whole article is great, and really charmingly written, with some golden nuggets embedded within, like:

You’ll find that spending more time getting HTML right reveals or even anticipates and evades accessibility issues. It’s just easier to write accessible code if it’s got semantic foundations.

In my experience, you will almost always spend more time overriding frameworks or compromising your design to fit the opinions of a framework.

Always style from the absolute smallest screen your content will be rendered on first, and use @media (min-width) queries to break to layouts that allow for more real estate as it becomes available.

If your site doesn’t work without JavaScript, your site doesn’t work.

Always progressively enhance your apps, especially when you’re fucking with something as browser-critical as page routing.

CSS { In Real Life } | Disentangling Frameworks

I just quoted Chris saying:

I think some tools are a good idea. But as few as possible, and the easier they are to stop using, the better.

Now Michelle asks:

Suppose we want to stop using Tailwind one day?

Turns out it’s a bit of a roach motel, much like most JavaScript frameworks: you can get in but you can’t easily get out.

So whenever possible, the safest, and most future-proof bet is to use the native features of the web platform.

Scalable CSS - Chris Coyier

Wise words:

Myself, I think some tools are a good idea. But as few as possible, and the easier they are to stop using, the better.

To paraphrase Michael Pollan:

Write CSS, not too much, mostly vanilla.

Line heights in CSS work better with ratios | Andy Bell

There’s a broader point here about declarative design:

Setting very specific values may feel like you’re in more control, but you’re actually rescinding control by introducing fragility in the form of overly-specific CSS.

Conditional CSS - Ahmad Shadeed

I like to think of CSS as a conditional design language.

Yes! This is exactly what I’m talking about with declarative design!

Read on for some fantastic examples. And also, Ahmad makes a comparison between CSS and Figma, pointing out that the conditional, declarative possibilities currently aren’t available in graphic design tools.

A CSS challenge: skewed highlight — Vadim Makeev

I did not know about box-decoration-break—sounds like a game-changer for text effects that wrap onto multiple lines.

Tree views in CSS

Styling a list of nested details elements to create a beautiful lokking tree view, all in CSS, all nicely accessible.

User Stylesheets Are Still Pretty Great and Should Be More Widely Supported — Pixel Envy

Hear, hear!

If you have even a passing knowledge of CSS, I encourage you to experiment with its possibilities.

12 Days of Web

All twelve are out, and all twelve are excellent deep dives into exciting web technologies landing in browsers now.

dbohdan/classless-css: A list of classless CSS themes/frameworks with screenshots

A collection of stylesheets that don’t use class selectors. Think of them as alternatives to default user-agent stylesheets.

An Interactive Guide to Flexbox in CSS

This is a superb explanation of flexbox—the interactive widgets sprinkled throughout are such a great aid to learning!

Harnessing groupthink: fine-tuning CSS specifications | Clearleft

In order to thoroughly attend to every pertinent aspect of the spec, fantasai asked us each to read one sentence aloud to the group. At which point we were all asked whether we thought the sentence made sense, and to speak up if we didn’t understand any of it or if it wasn’t clear.

Rich documents the excellent and fascinating process used in a recent W3C workshop (though what he describes is the very opposite of groupthink, so don’t let the title mislead you):

I’d never come across the person-by-person, sentence-by-sentence approach before. I found it particularly effective as a way of engaging a group of people, ensuring collective understanding, and gathering structured feedback on a shared document.

Why you should never use px to set font-size in CSS - Josh Collinsworth blog

Reminder:

em and rem work with the user’s font size; px completely overrides it.

When Our Tools Hold Us Back | OddBird

What happens if the ‘pace layers’ get out of sync?

A very thoughtful post by Miriam on how tools can adversely affect the pace of progress in the world of web standards.

When tools intervene between you and your access to the web platform, proceed with caution. Ask not only: How well does it work? But also: How well does it fail? Not only: What features do they provide? But also: What features do they prevent?

Support for the avoid value of the CSS fragmentation properties break-before, break-after, and break-inside when printing.

Finally!

Link tags: css

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