CategoryCSS

March 25, 2024 — There are many ways to approach a “Dark Mode” feature that respects a user’s system color scheme preferences and allows for per-site customization. Henry Bley-Vroman walks through a new possibility that leans into cutting-edge CSS, with minimal JavaScript to support persisting the user’s color scheme preference across pages. Read more…

March 8, 2024 — In Part 1 of this series, Temani Afif explored different CSS techniques to create tooltip shapes. The main challenge was to rely on a single element and create optimized code that could easily be controlled using CSS variables to update the size, shape, and position of the tail. In this second part, you are going explore more shapes. Read more…

March 1, 2024 — Tooltips are a very common pattern used in CSS for years. There are a lot of ways to approach tooltips in CSS, though some evoke headaches with all the magic numbers they require. In this article, Temani Afif presents modern techniques to create tooltips with the smallest amount of markup and the greatest amount of flexibility. Read more…

February 9, 2024 — A radar chart — also commonly called a spider chart — is yet another way to visualize data and make connections. Radar charts are inherently geometric, making them both a perfect fit and fun to make with CSS, thanks to the polygon() function. Read along as Preethi Sam demonstrates the process and sprinkles it with a pinch of JavaScript to make a handy, reusable component. Read more…

January 25, 2024 — Taking inspiration from shadows, author Yair Even Or creates the same sort of thing, only with a blurring effect in place of the shadow. Read along for a step-by-step explanation of how it comes together using a combination of masks, gradients, and the good ol’ backdrop-filter property. Read more…

January 16, 2024 — The CSS border-image property is one of those properties you undoubtedly know exists but may not have ever reached for. In this article, Temani Afif demonstrates different approaches for using border-image to create clever decorative accents and shapes. Read more…

January 2, 2024 — The View Transitions API is a new — but game-changing — feature that allows us to do the types of reactive state-based UI and page transitions that have traditionally been exclusive to JavaScript frameworks. In the second half of this mini two-part series, Adrian Bece expands on the demos from the first article to demonstrate how the View Transitions API can be used to transition not just elements between two states but the transition between full views and pages in single-page and multi-page applications. Read more…

December 22, 2023 — The View Transitions API is a new — but game-changing — feature that allows us to do the types of reactive state-based UI and page transitions that have traditionally been exclusive to JavaScript frameworks. In the first part of this mini two-part series, Adrian Bece thoroughly explains why we need the API and demonstrates its basic usage. Read more…

December 20, 2023 — Since the introduction of CSS viewport units in 2012, many of us have been using width: 100vw as a way to set an element’s width to the full width of the viewport. But, as Šime Vidas explains in this deep dive, 100vw does not always represent the full width of the viewport due to differences in how browsers handle scrollbars. Read more…

December 13, 2023 — Have you run into a situation where you need the padding of one element to align with the padding of another element? In this article, Brecht De Ruyte demonstrates the issue with a full-width slider component that breaks out of the main page container and shares a couple of techniques to keep it visually aligned with other elements on the page. Read more…