Archive for the ‘CSS’ Category
As you remember HTML is a markup language, but its creators wanted to improve the lives of website designers and programmers adding elements and parameters that are responsible for the appearance of the whole page including tags < font >, < b >, < i >, < bgcolor > and so on.
But at some point, the page’ code turns to be so unwieldy and unreadable that it becomes clear – this road leads “to nowhere.” Then it was decided to divide the page markup (HTML) and its visual design (CSS). Together, HTML and CSS can work wonders though you know it for sure.
The structure of the text is as important as its content. The probability that the user will not even read extremely well-written, but unformed text is very large, that’s why apply a bit of efforts to bring your articles in a readable form. What’s below are the CSS typography tools that can be used to give extra readability to your text by applying corresponding grid, font, font color etc. I hope this article will help you with this.
Typechart lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.
***
If you have a site heavy on text content, author thinks paying fine-grained attention to the underlying grid is important.
More web developers are looking towards responsive techniques for problem solving. This shift can be attributed with more users accessing websites from a mobile device, smartphone/tablet or otherwise. Coding your layout with responsive media queries allows the same HTML code to render properly on all screen resolutions.
But there is an underlying problem with content in responsive web design. That problem is dealing with media – especially images and galleries within your webpage. Mobile browsers do not have the same screen real estate for displaying full-sized images or slideshows. In this article I’ll go over a few techniques for responsive media and how to style your images with extra CSS3 design flair.
Setting the Mobile Viewport
Before handling actual image content I should explain a few key tags necessary for mobile support. In most of the modern smartphone browsers any default website will automatically render at 100% width. Then you can pinch to zoom in closer and pan around the layout.
For a responsive design you want to disable this functionality. Otherwise all the tweaks we’re making will be useless in comparison. For any responsive layout design you want to add a couple meta tags into your document header. I’ve copied the code below:
1 2 3 4 | <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1"> </meta><meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="true"> </meta><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,maximum-scale=1,user-scalable=no"> </meta> |
The most important tag here is the viewport which sets a number of important rendering traits. First the scale we’re generating is 1×1 which means no artificial 100% width display. Each pixel on your website will render the same on any mobile screen, regardless of the size or shape. Also the user-scalable value will limit users from zooming in and out of the layout. It’s a nice addition to keep your responsive site from breaking.
The other two meta tags aren’t necessary, but also won’t hurt to include together. Internet Explorer uses the X-UA-Compatible tag for setting the proper rendering engine(this includes Windows Mobile Phones). HandheldFriendly was originally developed under Blackberry but has gained some support in other 3rd party browsers.
The Adobe team is pushing forward a great technology called CSS blending. What is blending itself? It’s a method that allows to combine or mix two objects so that the constituent parts become indistinguishable from one another.
Designers have already been using blending for a long time, but not in such a way. Adobe team describes couple of simple additions to CSS to add blending to the browser’s rendering model. Upon offering this feature Adobe guys received positive feedback from devs and designers. Each and every of them is familiar with this function and offered multiple options on how to created great content with this feature.
So What is Blending?
Let’s define more exactly what blending is. It is the concept that determines how layer can inherit color from the elements that are underneath. Taking the color of your element and you mix it with the color that is behind the element. The name of the blend mode specifies the mathematical formula that does the ‘mixing’.
Let’s have a look at the following pictures; the ones below are combined without blending, and it comes out that one is simply overlapping the underlying.
But when the blending effect is applied the colors are recalculated and the gradient appears on the sun.
How to Apply Blending to Your Web Page Elements
Let’s consider a specific example.
Web design audience can’t stop buzzing about the grid system. On one hand it allows flexibility and encourages correlation between web page elements, eases the integration of pics and texts, lets us forget about the outdated HTML tables and helps to eliminate significant coding errors. But even cross-browser support doesn’t save it from bulging at the seams. Even though the most popular 960 grid system tries to lull us into a false sense of security, experts feel its inconsistency with the upcoming web trends. So in today’s post we’ve decided to dig deeper into the future of the grid system in web design and to try to figure out what this future will mean for us.
What seems to be the problem, officer?
So the tech world keeps moving forward. Since we are more accustomed to logical organization of information, web pages need to be well structured. Grid experts track the stats on the number of Internet users at different periods of time, on screen resolutions, operating systems and devices they work with. And they come to a conclusion that we lack some universal grid system to meet the modern standards, some new approach to comply with technologies that keep the web going. Today we’d like to place this question on the agenda and list the best traditional and innovative grid systems found on the web, just so you know better what we’re talking about.
* * *
960 Grid System
960 grid system is the most honorable and long-standing grid system used by web developers today. It comprises the fixed number of columns within the width of 960px. Why 960? It makes for many clean divisions with the whole numbers – it’s surely convenient for calculating the margins and widths as well as the columns location. 960gs is rendered by 12-column and 16-column grid types. If you need extra structure complexity the option of the 24-column grid is also at your disposal. What’s good about the 960gs is a nice multi-platform and cross-browser support, easy calculations and source ordering. If you feel 960gs is enough for your needs, feel free to build it using special ready-made tutorials and actions that don’t require much knowledge and skills.
Although it does a pretty good job in its field and fits the majority of screens, new screens and resolutions are getting larger, so 960 is sometimes not enough for them. This is because of its 20px gutters and gutter spaces that leave just 940px for the content area itself. And the modern web requires higher parameters. Let’s take fonts for instance: the sizes have increased within the last couple of years which should lead to larger content area and gutter space. Operating Systems are able to display much higher resolutions and complex layouts within the last decade. And even classic standard resolution of 1024×768 seems to be getting out-of-date. So it gets obvious that 960gs is not a panacea nowadays.
The power of CSS3 is truly unconquerable and with the lapse of time more and more web developers and designers follow the cult of this technique. Today we would like to present you a collection of CSS3 hover effect tutorials. Basically hover is an effect that occurs while placing the mouse cursor over some object on the website (such as a link, an image or even a simple text). This effect is a very important design element that is mostly used for styling and usability. Hover effect adds dynamics to the website and improves user experience instantly. This effect is unique due to its combination of creative and functional features. Now let’s dive into the CSS3 magic along with these awesome CSS3 hover effect tutorials.
Original Hover Effects with CSS3
* * *
Amazing Hover Effects with CSS3
* * *
Why are website forms so important? Logically enough, forms play a crucial role for the website conversion, and therefore impact the project success indicators on the whole. Having some basic knowledge of HTML, you’ll find it pretty easy to generate a standard form. But it’s not as easy to design and style your website form to make it look exquisite and be easy-to-use and accessible for all users at the same time. Hopefully you’ll find the article valuable while designing and coding website forms.
Most of web forms are known to be created with PHP, because it is an open-source coding environment which works perfectly with all major browsers and is widely available. But we shouldn’t stay too conservative and consider the other back-end coding options like ASP, Pearl, Ajax and JavaScript as well as advanced CSS properties to diversify the form appearance and functionality.
Generally, any web form acts in two ways: it generates an email or works with a database. The first rule while working with forms might be to avoid “re-inventing the wheel”. There are tons of open source services for generating the necessary codes and make the form do what it is supposed to do. One of such solution is Web Form Factory and is available for free on the Internet.
Wufoo is another popular option to make the web form creation an easy and painless task. They offer the creation wizard both for free and for the fee. But their prices are quite reasonable for such an efficient way of forms implementation.
Make Use of <Fieldset> And <Legend> Elements
It’s always good to group the related fields together, especially if you generate a lengthy form and require additional usability. The form is to be divided into separate manageable visual components.
The elements like <fieldset> and <legend> are the options to provide such a structuring for your form. The <fieldset> element features a border by default and you may just change or remove it within CSS.
You may group several related fields of a single form using <fieldset> and <legend> elements exactly like in the piece of code below:
label {
float: left;
text-align: right;
margin-right: 15px;
width: 100px;
}
While preparing this list of free CSS frameworks I’ve noticed that it is hard to find the best one among the variety of software which differs by size, age and popularity. I mean we all know such famous frameworks as 960 GS or BlueTrip, although sometimes you don’t need to use such monstrous and heavy tools for small and middle sized projects. Obviously many of you are familiar with CSS framework tools and probably you already use them. Mostly these free CSS frameworks provide powerful options for designing and creating original layout for the web page, but sometimes small details are very important and that’s why we’ve included into our collection several dedicated and light-weight tools like 520 GS (for creating Facebook layout) or Baseline (created for Typography addicts). We strongly believe that you won’t skip any item from our list and will use them in future.
1. Baseline
* * *
2. BlueTrip
* * *
A lot of you might have noticed that web developers tend to use large background images for their websites during the past couple of years. One of the reasons is the development of Internet connection – loading large images is no longer a rare thing. Plus, there’s no need to explain that large images are impressive and portray the website message brighter. You may see the content, headings and various functions placed on top of the large background, often on half-transparent blocks. Large images may add some special feeling of contrast and make your website stand out from a range of the similar ones. With large background pics you may make your site layout appealing and trendy as well as display the offered products or services more vividly.
What websites usually implement large background images? Predominantly these are websites running hotel, traveling, restaurant, design, photography and art businesses. Large images seem to be more suitable for the pages with the less complex structure and minor content. They are particularly great for the websites serving as business cards.
The large backgrounds imply not only photos but also illustrations, animations or even videos. Photos and illustrations are far more popular, though some well-thought animation may also look impressive. We will talk about the static large background images that make the visitors stay longer on your website. The trend of using large backgrounds is irresistible and this trend is not going anywhere anytime soon, so if you need an awesome modern website feel free to make use of it.
General Types of Large Background Images
We discern the following types of Large Background Images:
- A large image with a fixed positioning like in the examples below:
- A full size set up image that doesn’t fade into the background color.
Upstruct.com
***
Cpeople.ru
***
Thank goodness it’s Friday and the weekend will start very soon. But there’s still time to spend this day with use and our today’s collection will help you to do just that. CSS3 brings us joy and happiness with fresh and unique techniques that execute complicated tasks in a simple way. It is hard to find web designer who wouldn’t love all those design goodies that were created with the help of CSS3. We’ve tried to compile a balanced collection of advanced CSS3 tutorials that cover various spheres of web design including typography, buttons, selectors, various visual effects and so on. By the way you might be interested in checking out our previous collection of 20 Useful CSS3 Tutorials and Resources that we’ve published some months ago. So, have fun here and we sincerely hope that you’ll find useful stuff in our collection. Stay tuned and have a nice forthcoming weekend folks!
1. CSS3 Loading Spinner
* * *
2. Create Animated Price Grid Using CSS3
Hey there folks! We decided to devote our today’s post to something really useful and time-saving. So, please welcome our list of 10 online tools for CSS editing or creating ready elements that require styles. Now you can perform some styling actions with your CSS sheet using powerful and simple online helpers. Our list contains interesting services that allow you to edit, compress, format css files, create beautiful CSS buttons, generate gradients, and import and process CSS files.
Among these you’ll find some dedicated tools so please pay your attention to extremely popular CSS3 Generator – this excellent service would help you to generate codes for all of the CSS3 properties and easily paste them into your CSS sheet. We hope that this range of various tools will help you find a number of services for instant usage. Of course feel free to share your experience and let us know about your experience of working with CSS tools that are either present in this post or that we might have missed.
1. CleanCSS
* * *
2. StyleNeat
* * *
Featured Templates
Advertisement
Follow TemplateMonster Updates
Rss Feed: