Tags: styling

Shadow DOM: fast and encapsulated styles – Monica Dinculescu

Monica explains how Shadow DOM could be the perfect answer for scoping CSS:

We didn’t have style encapsulation, so we started naming things “the right way” with BEM, so that we didn’t accidentally stomp over each other’s styles. We wanted to be able to author CSS from inside a JavaScript component, so we started using CSS-in-JS. We needed all these tools, because “the platform” (read: the browsers that be) wasn’t there, and building these tools showed that there was a need to move forward. For style encapsulation, Shadow DOM is the platform moving forward.

Although, in a way, Shadow DOM is also another flavour of CSS-in-JS:

Before you complain that using a Shadow DOM and Web Components means that it absolutely requires JavaScript: this is true.

CSS is Awesome | CSS-Tricks

Geek humour is no laughing matter, as Chris demonstrates here with his thorough dissection of that coffee mug.

CSS is weird. It’s unlike any other code, and that makes a lot of programmers uncomfortable. But used wisely it can, in fact, be awesome.

It’s not often I say this, but read the comments.

Fixing fieldsets — That Emil is Emil Björklund

This is an excellent proposal from Emil. If we can apply display: contents to fieldsets, then we would finally have a way of undoing the byzantine browser styles that have hindered adoption of this element. This proposal also ensures backwards compatibility so there’d be no breakage of older sites:

The legacy appearance of fieldsets probably needs to be preserved for compatibility reasons. But display: contents is not supported in any old browsers, and is most likely used on exactly zero sites using the legacy look of fieldsets.

Whaddya say, browser makers?

A Love Letter to CSS

My argument is relatively simple: creating a comprehensive styling mechanism for building complex user interfaces is startlingly hard, and every alternative to CSS is much worse. Like, it’s not even close.

Under-Engineered Custom Radio Buttons and Checkboxen | Adrian Roselli

Stylish and accessible checkboxes and radio buttons accompanied by an explanation of the CSS involved.

No images were harmed in the making of these form controls.

Organize your CSS properties however you dang like – Michael.blog

Neither matters all that much and you can use every method on the same project without the universe imploding.

Some interesting approaches in the comments too.

PhD Thesis: Cascading Style Sheets

Håkon wrote his doctoral thesis on CSS …which is kinda like Einstein writing a thesis on relativity. There’s some fascinating historical insight into the creation of the standards we use today.

Eric’s Archived Thoughts: Grid-Powered Drop Quotes

I’ve been digging into CSS Grid a lot during the past week, so this post from Eric is very timely. On the surface it looks like a fairly simple use case but as you read through the explanation, it starts to become clear that the underlying thinking could be used in a lot of situations.

And, yes, like Eric, I too have been bitten by the Grid bug:

I’m working on my first redesign in a dozen years. If that doesn’t give you some sense of the power of Grid, well, I just don’t know what will.

Cascading HTML Style Sheets — A Proposal

It’s fascinating to look back at this early proposal for CSS from 1994 and see what the syntax might have been:

A one-statement style sheet that sets the font size of the h1 element:

h1.font.size = 24pt 100%

The percentage at the end of the line indicates what degree of influence that is requested (here 100%).

WTF, forms?

Here’s a CSS file that will give you a bit more control over styling some form elements. The thinking behind the CSS for each element is explained nice and clearly.

Style List Markers in CSS | CSS-Tricks

A clever way of styling list numbers and bullets in CSS. It feels like this should be its own pseudo-element already though, right? Well, that’s on the way.

CSS Inheritance, The Cascade And Global Scope: Your New Old Worst Best Friends – Smashing Magazine

A really terrific piece by Heydon that serves as a rousing defence of the cascade in CSS. It’s set up in opposition to methodologies like BEM (and there’s plenty of back’n’forth in the comments), but the truth is that every project is different so the more approaches you have in your toolkit, the better. For many projects, something like BEM is a good idea. For others, not so much.

Funnily enough, I’ve been working something recently where I’ve been embracing the approach that Heydon describes—although, to be fair, it’s a personal project where I don’t have to think about other developers touching the HTML or CSS.

CSS Writing Mode

Some nifty layout tricks using the writing-mode property in CSS.

The Languages Which Almost Were CSS - Eager Blog

A wonderful deep dive into the history of styling languages before CSS. I love spelunking down these internet history potholes—fascinating stuff!

Styling Broken Images

This is really, really clever. You can’t use generated content (:before and :after) on replaced content. The img element is replaced content …but only when the image actually loads. So if the image fails to load, you can apply specific fallback styles (using :before and :after).

A simple HTML5 Progress bar | Charlotte Jackson, Front-end developer

I love this little markup pattern: simple, accessible and elegant …with some quirky CSS gotchas around styling non-standard prefixed pseudo-elements. They came from the Shadow DOM …dun dun DUN!

GOV.UK elements

I really like the clear styling of checkboxes and radio buttons in the GDS pattern library. Fitts’s law in action.

Contextual Styling: UI Components, Nesting, and Implementation Detail by Harry Roberts

Smart thinking from Harry here on a common issue when it comes to naming and styling. As he points out, the solution is not technical, but lies in how you form your mental model:

The design issue here is solved by subtly inverting the problem.

Awesomplete: Ultra lightweight, highly customizable, simple autocomplete, by Lea Verou

Lea wasn’t happy with the lack of styling and extensibility of the datalist element, so she rolled her own lightweight autocomplete/type-ahead widget, and she’s sharing it with the world.

JS Bin: Vertical centering is impossible in CSS lol!

Four different techniques for vertical centring in CSS, courtesy of Jake.