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Core Web Vitals
29.5.2020
Core Web Vitals is what Google is calling a a new collection of three web performance metrics:
LCP: Largest Contentful Paint
FID: First Input Delay
CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift
These are all measurable. They aren’t in Lighthouse (e.g. the Audits tab in Chrome DevTools) just yet, but sounds...
Background Patterns, Simplified by Conic Gradients
28.5.2020
For those who have missed the big news, Firefox now supports conic gradients!
Starting with Firefox 75, released on the April 7, we can go to about:config, look for the layout.css.conic-gradient.enabled flag and set its value to true (it’s false by default and all it takes to switch...
First Steps into a Possible CSS Masonry Layout
18.5.2020
It’s not at the level of demand as, say, container queries, but being able to make “masonry” layouts in CSS has been a big ask for CSS developers for a long time. Masonry being that kind of layout where unevenly-sized elements are layed out in ragged rows. Sorta like a typical...
Chromium lands Flexbox gap
9.5.2020
I mentioned this the other day via Michelle Barker’s coverage, but here I’ll link to the official announcement. The main thing is that we’ll be getting gap with flexbox, which means:
.flex-parent {
display: flex;
gap: 1rem;
}
.flex-child {
flex: 1;
}
That’s excellent...
Exciting Things on the Horizon For CSS Layout
8.5.2020
Michelle Barker notes that it’s been a heck of a week for us CSS layout nerds.
Firefox has long had the best DevTools for CSS Grid, but Chrome is about to catch up and go one bit better by visualizing grid line numbers and names.
Firefox supports gap for display: flex, which is great,...
Constrained CSS grids without `max-width`
21.4.2020
Ain’t nothing wrong with max-width, but Ethan makes a point in the last sentence:
Rather than simply defaulting to max-width as a constraint, I can use the empty space around my design, and treat it as a layout tool.
If the space “around” your grid...
Using CSS to Set Text Inside a Circle
14.4.2020
You want to set some text inside the shape of a circle with HTML and CSS? That’s crazy talk, right?
Not really! Thanks to shape-outside and some pure CSS trickery it is possible to do exactly that.
However, this can be a fiddly layout option. We have to take lots of different things into...
Performant Expandable Animations: Building Keyframes on the Fly
1.4.2020
Animations have come a long way, continuously providing developers with better tools. CSS Animations, in particular, have defined the ground floor to solve the majority of uses cases. However, there are some animations that require a little bit more work.
You probably know that animations should...
4 CSS Grid Properties (and One Value) for Most of Your Layout Needs
30.3.2020
CSS Grid provides us with a powerful layout system for websites. The CSS-Tricks guide gives you a comprehensive overview of Grid’s properties with layout examples. What we’re going to do here is a reverse approach to show you the smallest possible set of grid properties you need to know to meet...
Flexbox and absolute positioning
18.3.2020
Chen Hui Jing notes that when you absolutely position a flex item, it's no longer part of the flex layout. Except... it kinda is a little bit. If you make the child position: absolute; but don't apply any top/right/bottom/left properties, then flexbox alignment will still apply to it.
It's odd...
The Slideout Footer
5.3.2020
A fascinating new site called The Markup just launched. Tagline: Big Tech Is Watching You. We’re Watching Big Tech. Great work from Upstatement. The content looks amazing, but of course, around here we're always interested in the design and tech as well. There is loads to adore, from the clean...
Making Things Better: Redefining the Technical Possibilities of CSS
3.3.2020
(This is a sponsored post.)
Robin recently lamented the common complaint that CSS is frustrating. There are misconceptions about what it is and what it does. There are debates about what kind of language it is. There are even different views on where it should be written.
Rachel Andrew has a...
Responsive Grid Magazine Layout in Just 20 Lines of CSS
25.2.2020
I was recently working on a modern take of the blogroll. The idea was to offer readers a selection of latest posts from those blogs in a magazine-style layout, instead of just popping a list of our favorite blogs in the sidebar.
The easy part was grabbing a list of posts with excerpts from...
Same HTML, Different CSS
19.2.2020
Ahmad Shadeed covers the idea of a card component that has a fixed set of semantic HTML with some BEMy classes on it. There is a title, author, image, and tags. Then he redesigns the card into five totally different designs without touching any of the HTML just the CSS.
If this is an ah-ha moment...
Helping Browsers Optimize With The CSS Contain Property
10.2.2020
There is a growing number of things that we have to do to help the browser achieve for peak performance.
Responsive image syntax has several. For example, needing to tell the browser how large the image will be in our layout with the sizes attribute and how big the images are with w descriptors....
Crafting a Cutout Collage Layout with CSS Grid and Clip-path
5.2.2020
Learn how to code up an interesting design with a cutout image look using CSS Grid and clip-path.
Crafting a Cutout Collage Layout with CSS Grid and Clip-path was written by Briana Camp and published on Codrops
Sticky Table of Contents with Scrolling Active States
30.1.2020
Say you have a two-column layout: a main column with content. Say it has a lot of content, with sections that requires scrolling. And let's toss in a sidebar column that is largely empty, such that you can safely put a position: sticky; table of contents over there for all that content in the main...
Flexible Captioned Slanted Images
25.1.2020
The end result of Eric Meyer's tutorial on creating this row of slanted images is pretty classy. But it's more about the journey than the destination (there isn't even really an isolated demo for it). Eric does an amazing job at talking it through like a thought process.
We did that recently, only...
3D Folding Layout Technique for HTML Elements
14.1.2020
A tutorial on an experimental 3D layout technique for HTML elements with endless possibilities.
3D Folding Layout Technique for HTML Elements was written by Daniel Velasquez and published on Codrops
The Auto-Flowing Powers of Grid’s Dense Keyword
8.1.2020
Let's say we're working on the homepage of a news website. You're probably used to seeing some card-based content in a grid layout, right? Here's a classic example, The New York Times:
Yeah, something like that.
There are going to be some cards/elements/boxes/whatever that need to take up more...