CSS

Every Way to Style an Angular Component (but funny)😂

Angular gives you so many ways to add styles to a component because, apparently, developers love too many choices and unnecessary suffering.

Every Way to Add Styles in Angular... Which One Should You Use?

Ever felt like styling an Angular component is a bit like ordering coffee? You think it's simple, but then you realize there are a million ways to do it! Well, in this tutorial, we're going to break down the many different ways to add styles in Angular components, so you can choose the best approach for your app.

Angular Theming... A Stand Up Special No One Asked For

You ever try to theme an Angular component? Yeah… it sounds easy. Just tweak some colors, maybe adjust a layout, how hard could it be? Well, let me tell you, by the time you're done battling :host, :host-context(), and CSS variables, you'll start questioning everything.

How to Theme Angular Components Like a Pro

Today, we’re diving deep into theming Angular components. We’ll harness the power of the CSS :host and :host-context selectors, along with CSS custom properties. I’ll show you how to create different layout and color styles for a custom card component and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each approach.

Styling in Angular and other life lessons

Ever tried styling a component in Angular? It’s not just CSS—it’s an event! From class binding to ::ng-deep, from ViewEncapsulation to the mystical powers of !important, this is the wild world of Angular styling!

Components are Just Tiny Digital Apartments 😂

Angular folks, this one’s for you! Ever feel like your components are just tiny digital apartments trying to live their best life? Well, let’s talk about it—Seinfeld style!

Untagged Template Literals... The Upgrade You Didn’t Know You Needed!

Have you ever felt like some of the dynamic expressions in your Angular component templates are a tangled mess? What if I told you we now have a cleaner, more modern way to handle dynamic classes, styles, and even complex interpolations, without the headache?

Angular Styling Secrets: How to Use :host and :host-context Like a Pro

Styling Angular components can be tricky, especially with encapsulated styles. But :host and :host-context let you target a component’s root element and adapt styles based on its context—without global CSS hacks. In this guide, you'll learn how to apply, modify, and control styles using these selectors, making your components smarter and more flexible. Let’s dive in!

Seriously Though, You Don't Need ::ng-deep

Recently, I created a tutorial about how to avoid ::ng-deep when styling Angular components. Many of you didn’t like the techniques I provided so I thought it would be good to follow up to clear up some misconceptions and provide more specific examples. In short, I think you should try to avoid using it because its use is discouraged by the Angular team. In this example, I’ll explain why and I’ll show you some things that I like to do instead.

Turn Basic Angular Components into Interactive SVGs!

Did you know that in Angular, your component template doesn't have to be limited to HTML? It can also be an SVG! In this tutorial, we'll explore how to render SVGs as component templates and use Angular features to make them dynamic and interactive.

Deferred Loading + animations: Improved Performance, Cool Effects

Is your Angular app loading content users never see? Let’s fix that! In this tutorial, we’ll boost performance with deferred loading and add sleek animations to make components pop as they enter the viewport. Let’s dive in!

Stop Using ::ng-deep… What to do Instead

Hey everyone, welcome back! In this tutorial, we’re diving into something that’s been a challenge in the past for Angular developers, the need to break style encapsulation in certain cases with ::ng-deep. It’s been deprecated for quite some time but there are still times where we need to use it. Or at least there used to be. Now, we have modern solutions that not only replace ::ng-deep but can also make code cleaner and more maintainable.

Dynamic expand and collapse effects in Angular: A Simple Guide

Hey there Angular peeps, ready to create another animation with me? In this tutorial, we’re going to add a smooth expanding and collapsing animation to our project to make it not just functional but dynamic and polished. We’ll kick things off with the basics and then we’ll take it up a notch with some more advanced concepts towards the end.

Need to Toggle Some Content in Angular? Here's How You Do It

Hello and welcome to another Angular tutorial. In this example I’m going to cover how to create something that I need often, a toggle button. This type of button controls the visibility of some sort of associated content. We’ll look two main approaches, one where we use a class and some CSS to control the visibility, and another where we use conditional logic to insert content into or remove it from the DOM. We’ll also look at a couple of bonus variations with the class-based, CSS approach too.

Create a Cross-fade Animation

There are a handful of animations that are commonly found in various applications that you probably use every day. I’ll bet you don’t even notice them or give them much thought. These apps just feel easier to use and more intuitive. In this example I’ll show you how to use one that I need often, a crossfade animation where there’s some content fading out while some other content fades in.

Create a Basic Flip Animation

There are certain animations that are commonly found in a lot of different applications. They are common because people are used to the way they feel, and they are good at conveying interactions and the meaning behind them. One of these types of animations is a flip animation where you have some content and then, through some sort of interaction, it needs to flip over and reveal the content from the opposite side. We’ll this is what we’re going to create in this example.

CSS Shapes: The Reference Box

There are a few things that CSS shapes need in order to function and display as desired. First, they need to be floated. Next, they need a coordinate system to control how they are drawn and where they are placed. And this coordinate system needs an origin.

CSS Shapes: Fundamentals

When you began building websites did you expect content to wrap around a floated image with transparency? Did you think that the first time you created a floated circle with a 50% border radius that the content would flow around it in an arc? And each time you did, did you yell to yourself, why is this not possible? Well, this used to be a real problem on the web, but now we have CSS Shapes.

CSS Shapes: What are They?

So what exactly are CSS Shapes? Well, it’s probably easiest to understand what they are by contrasting them with what they are not. So let's look at some examples.

CSS Shapes: Introduction

When designing for print, the sky is the limit. We can really push the envelope especially when it comes to layout. We can wrap content around any shape we’d like. But on the web, everything is contained within rectangles. We’ve been pretty creative while building in this boxy world but what if we could break free and build designs more similar to those found in editorial design?

Create a Slide-in/Slide-out Animation

When you build things in Angular, you’ll probably end up wanting or needing to add animations and transitions to parts of your UI. One very common one is a “slide-in” or “slide-out” animation where an item transitions from a hidden to a visible state. And since this is something that you’re likely going to need at some point, I figured that I’d show you how to create one. So that’s what we’re going to do in this post.

3 Ways to add Dynamic CSS Custom Properties in Angular

Sometimes you may need to programmatically set the value for a CSS custom property while building components in Angular. I occasionally run into situations where I need to use a custom property based on a dynamic value. Like a bar chart for example, where the items in the chart are based on data from an api. Well in this example, we’re going to look at three different ways to set custom properties programmatically. We’ll use basic style binding, then we’ll use the Renederer2 setStyle() method, and after that, we’ll use host element binding.

Create a Custom Loading Screen in Your Angular App

If you’ve built apps in angular in the past, I’m sure you’ve experienced the blank screen while you wait for the app to be bootstrapped. In smaller applications, it’s not as noticeable but in larger, more complex applications, we may need to wait for a little bit before we see the actual content loaded. And staring at a blank screen while we wait is not ideal. Well, we can upgrade this experience by adding our own custom loading screen and it’s pretty easy to do too. In this example that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

Host Decorators Are Dead… Use Host Element Binding Instead

In the newest versions of Angular, the @HostBinding and @HostListener decorators are no longer intended for use. As the new documentation states, they “exist exclusively for backwards compatibility”. There’s a new, more streamlined way to do this type of thing, and if you’ve worked with Angular in the past, it may look familiar to you. It’s kind of an old concept made new again. In this video we’ll look at a couple of examples I created for past videos about these decorators, and we’ll replace them with the newer methods. Also, we’ll update a few other concepts in these components and directives along the way too. Ok, let’s start with a @HostBinding example.

Using @HostBinding with Signals

If you’re building apps with Angular, you’re probably using signals more and more every day. This can definitely be a challenge at times because it’s such a different way of working. And, there are things that just don’t quite work with signals yet, like @HostBinding for example. Well in this post, I’m going to demonstrate how we can actually use the @HostBinding decorator with signals, pretty easily right now even though the decorator was not originally built to support them directly. Alright, let’s get to it.

Replacing Static Inputs with the Host Attribute Token

If you build things with Angular, you probably already know that you need to keep up with the framework as it evolves over time. Well, in this post, I’m going to help you do just that. We’re going to take a look at the new HostAttributeToken injection token and why you may want to use it. In this post we’ll use an example of an existing button component with inputs and we’ll replace them with the inject() function and the HostAttributeToken class. Alright, let’s get to it!

Angular Animations: Animating to an Unknown Height

Have you ever tried to animate an element to an unknown height with CSS alone? If so, you’ve probably found that it’s not as easy as it seems. To animate a CSS height, you need to animate to a specific value, one hundred percent and auto both won’t work. You can transition max-height but this means that you probably need to use a random arbitrary value that may not work in all cases. It’s just weird and may not even work depending on what you’re trying to do. Well, this is something that is available with Angular animations. In this post, I’ll show you how. Alright, let’s get to it.

Angular Animations: Keyframe Animations

As you probably already know, when you build apps today, you’ll likely need to use animations and transitions to enhance the UI where possible. With Angular’s animation framework we have access to some pretty powerful features which allow us to do things that may not be possible with CSS alone. In this post we’re going to look at a little, fun and crazy example using the Angular keyframes() animation function. Alright, let’s get to it!

Angular Animations: Enter and Leave

When building things with Angular have you ever found yourself with the need to animate mark-up as it physically enters and leaves the DOM? This isn’t possible right? Actually, it is. In Angular we have access to a powerful animation framework. It’s packed with many features that just aren’t possible, at least at the moment, with CSS by itself. In this post we’re going to dive into one such feature, the ability to animate mark-up as it’s added and removed from the document with the :enter and :leave aliases. Alright, let’s get to it!

Angular Animations: Learn the Basics

When you build stuff in Angular, you probably pretty quickly discover that you want to add animations and transitions. They are an important aspect to any application now-a-days right? They help make the overall user experience feel nicer and can help to make it more intuitive too. Many times, we can use CSS to handle these animations, but Angular has a powerful animation framework baked right in that allows us to do a lot more than what we can with plain ol’ CSS. Alright, let’s get to it!

Angular CDK Overlay: Adding Animations

When using the Angular CDK Overlay module, you will likely want to transition the opening and closing of the overlay content. It’s something that seems like it should be pretty easy and straightforward but it’s actually a little tricky. It can’t really be transitioned with CSS only because it’s markup that gets added into and removed from the document. It’s not a simple style or class change. We need to leverage Angular animations to make it work well. In this post I’ll show you why and I’ll show you how to make animations work for your overlays. Alright, let’s get to it!

Angular CDK Overlay: How Positioning Works

The Angular CDK Overlay is a handy, powerful, and fairly complex feature that can be used to quickly create modals and pop-ups. In my previous post about the CDK Overlay, I covered the basics needed to create both a modal using the global position strategy and a pop-up using the flexible connected to position strategy. I’d suggest that if you’re unfamiliar with the Overlay module at all, you go check out that post first because the demos in this video will build off the examples we built, and concepts that we learned. In this post we are going to learn about different ways to control how a pop-up gets positioned when using a connected overlay because there’s a lot to it and it’s all pretty cool.

Angular CDK Overlay: Learn the Basics

When building apps in Angular, you will likely need to trigger a modal or pop-up at some point. Sometimes this is easy and can be done with some simple CSS, but other times, it may be more complicated. You may need to append markup to the bottom of your document so that it can be placed on top of everything else. Or maybe depending on scroll position, a pop-up will need to open upward instead of downward. There’s lot’s of possible scenarios where you may need more than what’s capable with CSS by itself and that’s where the CDK Overlay Module comes into play.

3 Modern CSS Techniques for Centering Items

Centering items with HTML and CSS used to be pretty tough to do. Well, it’s not anymore. There are many different ways to do it now. And that’s a good thing because we may need different options in different scenarios. In this video we’ll look at three of my favorite ways to center items, We’ll use positioning, then we’ll use flexbox, and lastly, we’ll use my go-to CSS grid. Alright, let’s get to it.

New CSS features in Angular

In Angular 17 we have a couple of new ways to include styles within our components. In this post we’ll take a close look at these new features, and we’ll learn how to use them. Alright, let’s get to it!

Alpha Transparency in CSS Custom Properties

Custom properties have been a pretty big deal for us who use CSS regularly. Many of us are probably starting to use them quite a bit, especially as part of a color or theming system. They really work great for this. But what about when we need alpha transparency for a color set with a custom property? Well, in this post I’ll show you how it works. Alright, let’s check it out!

HTML: How to Resize Markup Like an Image With CSS Container Queries!

You know what’s cooler than using an image when building a website? How about making something with HTML and CSS that looks and acts like an image? And you know what, this is super easy now with container queries. In this post we’re going to make an ad, that looks like an image, with HTML and CSS. Then we’re going to make it act like an image as it gets squished, expanded, and moved to other locations within the document. Ok, let’s check it out!

Look ma... no JavaScript!

In this post we’re going to look at a really exciting new CSS feature, scroll driven animations. We’ll take some, boring, scrolling content, and give it an upgrade to something a little more interesting. And we’ll do it all with CSS. No JavaScript. Alright, let’s get to it!

Angular Host Binding Animations

Angular provides many ways to animate things. In this post we are going to look specifically at adding :enter and :leave animations to a component as it gets added and removed from the UI. We’re going to do this with the Angular @HostBinding decorator and the enter and leave aliases for animations. Alright, let’s check it out!

Single and Multi-line Truncation With Ease

Are you running into scenarios where you have a single line of text that can get too long and you want to truncate it? How about multiple lines that you want to constrain to a known number of lines and then truncate? Well, in this post I’ll show you how to do both with nothing but CSS. Let’s check it out!

How to Utilize Angular CDK Breakpoint Observer

Most of the time, when creating responsive applications in Angular, we just need to use CSS and media queries. Every once in a while though, we need to alter some interactivity or logic based on these same media queries. Meaning, we need to access them in some way from JavaScript. And this can get a little messy sometimes. Luckily for us, we can use the Breakpoint Observer utility provided by the Angular CDK. Let’s check it out!

Things You Didn’t Know CSS Grid Could Do

With CSS grid we can do some pretty amazing things. We can easily place items in the center of containers. We can stack items without positioning. We can create complex layouts quickly with ease. And, we can even animate to unknown heights which used to be near impossible without using Javascript. So, in this post we’ll look at a few of my favorite grid provided abilities. Alright, let’s get to it!

CSS Masks Guide: Solutions to Common Design Challenges

As people who use HTML and CSS to build things for the web, we run into difficult challenges daily. Sometimes things seem so easy but end up being a real pain in the butt. Well, I’m here to help… at least a little bit… well hopefully. In this post I’m going to show you how I’ve solved three pretty common design issues in the past with CSS masks.

Crafting Dynamic Text Paths with HTML, SVG, and CSS: A Guide to Responsive and Accessible Graphics

When it comes to incorporating irregular shaped text into web projects, we often end up using images. However, there may be a better way – using inline SVG and CSS to create dynamic, responsive, and accessible graphics directly within our HTML. In this post, we'll walk you through the process of achieving this, ensuring our designs are on point while maintaining accessibility and SEO friendliness.

How to Style HTML Radio Buttons: A Step-by-Step Guide

HTML radio buttons are a staple of web forms, but their default appearance leaves much to be desired. In this blog post, we'll walk through one of my favorite methods to customize the look of radio buttons using CSS, creating a more user-friendly and visually appealing experience.

CSS Shapes Bring Rich Editorial Design Features to the Web

For the longest time we’ve been stuck with boxes and it makes things that are common yet beautiful in the print world difficult if not impossible on the web. CSS shapes change this, leveling the playing field allowing us to create much more engaging layouts and designs on the web.

Good Design Comes From... CRAP - CodeSLO Presentation

I was lucky enough to get the invite from Matt West, founder/organizer of CodeSLO, via my coworker @schwarty to give a presentation at the CodeSLO meetup "HTML and CSS - Part 3 - Modern Web Design" meet up. This was a good time. I got to get out and talk shop with a great group of people who were excited to learn about design and the role it plays on the web. My talk went a little over thirty minutes and covered the basic principles of good design: contrast, repetition, proximity, alignment, layout, typography, color, and more. For those that were unable to attend, feel free to take a look at the slides to see what you missed...

Fixing the :active Pseudo Class Selector in Internet Explorer

Sometimes it's necessary to have a link that contains some children elements. Say, for example, you have a link that contains some text and an inline SVG icon that's styled using CSS. This set up allows you to style the icon for all of the link states `:hover`, `:visited`, and `:active` right? Well yes, with the exception of the `:active` state in Internet Explorer. Well, not without a work around at least.

How to Force Hardware Acceleration to Improve CSS Animations

You've likely seen CSS animations and transitions in various web applications out there where they just didn't work well. They are choppy and freeze along with a bunch of other issues. This occurs because they are not taking advantage of the device GPU and hardware acceleration, but are instead using the browsers' built in rendering engine.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 19: Responsive Boilerplate

With all of the great frameworks popping up it can be difficult to choose the "right" one. Besides doing some really great things, probably the two most popular frameworks [Twitter Bootstrap](http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2/) and [Zurb Foundation](http://foundation.zurb.com/), can be a little overreaching at times when it comes to theming them. You may find that you have to overwrite and undo many styles to make them look unique. This is where web developer [James South's](https://twitter.com/James_M_South) [Responsive Boilerplate](http://responsivebp.com/) may prove to be that "right" one.

Alter Browser Default Panning and Zooming Behavior With CSS touch-action

Now that there are so many people accessing the sites we build through touch devices many of us will see that we need to alter the default panning and zooming behavior of the browser when touching them.

Quick Tip - 18: Automatically Update Placed Files in Adobe Illustrator

If you use Illustrator for interface design you probably take advantage of using placed files for some of your design elements. I've started using the heck out of them in order to make updating items across files much easier and quicker. As I started doing this I quickly realized that it's monotonous to update the placed files manually after making edits to them. Well, there's good news, you can set Illustrator to automatically updated them for you.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 18: Morphing Buttons Concept

It used to be that websites and their interactions were much different than those from native software applications. Well this is not so much the case anymore. [Mary Lou](http://tympanus.net/codrops/author/crnacura/), a freelance web designer and developer from [tympanus.net](http://tympanus.net/), wrote an interesting article discussing a few different morphing buttons concepts that showcase some amazing possibilities for web interactions.

Quick Tip – 17: How to Diff CSS Live Edits in Chrome DevTools

If you're reading my blog I'll assume that you are familiar with how to live edit code within all browser developer tools. I use them all the time and can hardly remember what it was like without them. Chrome DevTools tend to be my favorite but FireFox and Internet Explorer continue to improve.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 17: Open Source Ampersands

Paul Irish created and maintains a site devoted to Ampersands. The site is a collection of open source web fonts that only contain the ampersand character. He created it based off an [article from 2008](http://simplebits.com/notebook/2008/08/14/ampersands-2/) regarding the usage of ampersands and the fact that certain variants of the character in some fonts are more interesting than others. The article also points out that the ampersand character is often used only for display purposes and not in content so there is no reason not to use more interesting versions.

Using CSS Generated Content

Back in the good ol' days, CSS was much more limited than it is today. If we needed to style something it had to be in the page which, in turn, led to bloated markup simply for design purposes. Luckily we are no longer in those days.

Quick Tip - 15: How to Fix ng-cloak Flicker in AngularJS

The ng-cloak directive was added to Angular in order to prevent the flickering of elements before your application has fully loaded. It then removes ng-cloak once it has had a chance to compile your views. However, there is still a flicker issue that occurs between when the view is first loaded and before Angular has had a chance to run.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 15: The Magic of CSS

We pick up lots of pieces of knowledge over time when working with CSS and then if we don't use them often we can forget how to use them and then have to spend time either looking it up again or looking for where we used them in other projects.

SVGs are So Fresh to Defs

No, this is not a hip hop song about SVGs, sorry to those of you who were expecting that. This is another post about good ol' SVG graphics. So most of us know that there is a lot that you can do with SVGs and it can all be done in many different ways. The SVG `defs` element can be used to make SVG code simpler, cleaner, and better.

Quick Tip - 14: Centering the Grid in Illustrator

When you create a new Illustrator document the grid will always be aligned based off the upper left corner of the art board. Personally, I always want it to be aligned to the top center. How do you do that? Well, the simplest way that I've found is to actually just center the art board.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 14: flexboxgrid.com

If you're ready to build out your next site using flexbox you are probably going to want to use a grid. Well, you're in luck because [Kristofer Joseph](https://twitter.com/dam) has created [Flexbox Grid](http://flexboxgrid.com/) with many of the features that you're used to with other div based grids and more.

What the :root Pseudo Class is and Why You Might Use it

The :root pseudo class, at first glance, is a little odd. It seems like it's simply a replacement for using the HTML tag as a CSS selector. There's a little bit more to it than that and in this article I will explain what the :root pseudo class is and why you might use it.

Oh Wow That's Neat - 13: subtlepatterns.com

Subtlepatterns.com is a great free resource for high quality repeating backgrounds for use in your designs. It was created and is actively maintained by Atle Mo.

Things You May Not Know About CSS Backgrounds

I have been using CSS background properties for quite a few years and have only used what I have needed. There are some pretty cool things that can be done with backgrounds that I was not so familiar with. In this article I'll highlight some of these not so common options.

Quick Tip – 12: Rounding Corners in Illustrator

Ever needed to quickly and precisely round corners on vector shapes and typography already added to your designs in illustrator? Well, it's pretty easy to do nowadays.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 12: SVG Optimiser

If you've ever created an SVG image in Adobe Illustrator you've seen some pretty crazy code. Just like all other code we write, it should be simple, clean, and lean. Also, like any other image type we want to make sure that it is optimized and has the highest quality with the smallest file size.

AngularJS Overview for Web Designers

AngularJS is a newer JavaScript framework geared towards the creation and maintenance of single page web applications. It is considered to be a “toolset for building the framework most suited to your application development” meaning that, for the most part, you can choose the elements that you want to use and swap out those that you don’t want with other libraries/frameworks of your choice. It is built and maintained by Google and is open source with an MIT license.

Quick Tip – 11: Text Wrapping in Illustrator

Often when creating a web design mock-up you'll have the need to wrap text around objects. Illustrator makes this very quick and easy to do.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 11: Whatfont Bookmarklet

Do you ever use browser developer tools just to figure out what fonts and font styles are being applied on your site and perhaps others? Well, there's an easier way thanks to Chengyin Liu an engineer at Backplane. He has created the Whatfont Bookmarklet extension for Chrome.

Quick Tip – 10: Using Global Swatches in Illustrator

Ever wish that you could create high fidelity design mock-ups with the ability to make global color changes? Well, with Illustrator you can do exactly that.

Quick Tip – 09: Placing PhotoShop Documents Within Other PhotoShop Documents

You can now place PhotoShop documents within other PhotoShop documents. This is awesome when you are in the process of mocking up large scale applications consisting of common components like site headers, footers, navigation, etc. It also helps to keep these design elements consistent when developing with a team of designers.

Pseudo-Classes vs. Pseudo-Elements

For the longest time the only pseudo selectors that we could use were :link, :hover, :visited and :active and they could only be applied to a tags. As long as we were intending to support ie6 that was all we could do. As we've adopted philosophies like progressive enhancement, graceful degradation, or dropped support for ie6, 7, and 8 we have seen the landscape of CSS selectors change dramatically.

Quick Tip - 08: Highlight Search Results With the HTML5 Mark Tag

The HTML5 mark tag was created in order to highlight text within a document that is relative to another context. This is perfect for highlighting the search term in a list of results.

Oh Wow That’s Neat – 08: Cubic-Bezier.com

I don't really come across much about the use of CSS3 cubic-bezier() functions for easing in animations. It is a timing function that can be used in place of the easing keyword for CSS animations.

Modern Web Typography: Kerning

Kerning is a very important aspect when it comes to setting type. Unfortunately, until more recent times, it has been left out when it comes to the web.

How to Use CSS Filter Effects

Quick Tip - 06: Use the Four-Value Syntax to Properly Position Background Images

After writing my post Use CSS Calc to Properly Position Background Images I had some folks point out that you can now use the new Four-Value syntax for the background-position property to achieve the same effect. I was absolutely blown away when I saw that this was finally possible. I'm mean, this just makes sense and it's something that I've wanted for years.

Oh Wow That's Neat - 06: www.fontwalk.de

www.fontwalk.de is a site that was created as a marketing tool for www.fontshop.com. I'm not so interested in their fonts, although it looks like they have a nice selection. I am more interested in the great design ideas behind the Font Walk site.

Make it Count with CSS Counters

Often I've found myself in a spot where I've needed to style an ordered list in a way that I just couldn't do with CSS. So I either had to live with it as it was or get tricky with JavaScript or something to create a custom list with the necessary markup. Then I stumbled across CSS Counters and that all changed.

Quick Tip - 05: Small Caps Using font-variant

Ever needed to use small caps in a website? They can add a really nice typographic touch in certain circumstances, but I've never really taken advantage of them with CSS.

Oh Wow That's Neat - 05: Perspective Page View Navigation

Navigation can be a hard thing to master. Handling it intuitively and in a usable fashion is even more challenging with the wide variety of devices and screen resolutions available. Most sites tend to just shove all of their menu items under some three bar icon and expand the menu when clicked. Seems to work pretty well, but what If your were to think of navigation in a whole new way?

How and Why to Use the CSS Clip Property

The CSS Clip property is an odd one. I've been building websites for a long time and didn't know about it even though it's been around for a while. In this article I am going to explore how and why to use the CSS Clip property.

Quick Tip - 04: Create Drop Caps With CSS

CSS drop caps came up in a discussion with a co-worker the other day. I don't use drop caps in web sites I design, but there's really no reason why I shouldn't.

Oh Wow, That’s Neat – 04: Ink - Responsive Email Templates

Anyone who's ever had to create HTML emails knows that it sucks. You have to write old, crappy, code and inline style everything. You have to use tables because more modern float layouts just don't work consistently across the bagillion email clients that are out there. Overall, I would say that they are probably my least favorite part of the Job. But, they don't have to be. Thanks to the great folks at [ZURB](http://zurb.com/) we can hit the ground running when developing HTML emails.

The Difference Between CSS box-shadow and filter: drop-shadow();

Normally when I need to add a drop shadow to an element I will use CSS box-shadow. There's another way that I can handle this though. I can use CSS filters. They allow me to do many different things like apply gray-scale, apply sepia, blur, adjust brightness, adjust contrast, adjust hue, invert colors, saturate colors, and alter opacity.

Oh Wow, That's Neat - 03: Myth.io

CSS Preprocessors like LESS, SASS, and Stylus are all the rage now-a-days and rightfully so. They all do some great stuff allowing us to write CSS in a more programmatic way where we repeat ourselves less and operate at a higher efficiency level. With all the good that they provide for us they do add a layer of complexity.

Understanding CSS Regions

Some of my favorite parts of CSS3 are those concerning layout. So far I've explored Flexbox and Columns, but today I'm going to dig into CSS Regions.

Quick Tip - 02: Use CSS Calc to Properly Position Background Images

If you would have asked me about the CSS Calc function six months or so ago I would have said "What's That?". But luckily for me I stumbled across some blog post highlighting the coolest new CSS stuff that's available for us to use and CSS Calc was one of them. It's really a pretty useful item to have at our disposal.

Oh Wow, That’s Neat – 02: iconmelon.com, svg Icons Lib for the Web

There are many pros and cons to using icon fonts and SVGs for icons in your designs. I had been under the impression that icon fonts were the more effective of the two but have had some reservations. For one, what happens if you need a multi-color icon? Remember, they are simply fonts so they have to be a solid color. The only way around that is to get all hacky and build the various components using other elements. The sizing of things is also a little odd since they are fonts they have to be sized with font-size and line-height which doesn't necessarily feel right. Using animations with them is also very limited when compared to SVG. And one last thing, they cant be set to scale at a percentage of their containing elements like SVGs can.

All You Need to Know About CSS3 Multiple Columns

Layout has traditionally been a pretty difficult thing to get right when it comes to building web sites. With CSS3, however, it looks like things are getting a bit easier. I've written "Flexbox: Modern Web Layouts Simplified" which covered Flexbox layout techniques. That was cool, but there are other great layout features provided for us in CSS3, In this article I'm covering CSS3 Multiple Columns.

Oh Wow, That's Neat - 01: Snap.svg

For those of you that have read my post "SVGs are Cool & You Should Start Using Them, If You’re Not Already" you know that I am a fan of SVGs. In fact, now that I know a little more about them I feel that they are very under used in modern web development. They are light weight, resolution independent, and they really open up the door to so many possibilities for enhancing user experiences.

How to Use 2D and 3D CSS Transforms

Most of the time when using HTML and CSS we are simply drawing flat rectangles, rounded rectangles, or circles within 2D space. CSS Transforms allow us to alter the shape, position, rotation, and scale of html elements within both 2D and 3D space. When combined with CSS transitions, transforms can really enhance the user experience although that topic will require its own post.

Flexbox: Modern Web Layouts Simplified

New in the world of web layouts is the CSS3 "Flexible Box Layout Module" known as Flexbox. It is so new in fact that at the time of writing this post it is still just a W3C Recommendation and is still in flux with different browsers implementing things a little differently. That being said, it actually has been around since 2009 although the syntax was different. The most recent version of the module seems to be fairly stable with solid support among the latest versions of all major browsers.

SVGs are Cool & You Should Start Using Them, If You're Not Already

Up until a couple of months ago I had no idea that there was even such a thing as an inline SVG. Once I found out I realized that I need to learn more about them. First off SVG stands for "Scalable Vector Graphics" which literally means just what it says. It's simply an image format containing XML code that describes vector graphics which can be resized large or small without affecting quality.