CSS: Techniques, Tutorials, Layouts

Since web-development is a quite dynamic field nowadays, new techniques are being developed and updated all the time. A primary example are CSS-related techniques, which emerge almost every day and offer more possibilities for fellows web-developers. We keep an eye on the recent developments and collect new ideas and methods for our readers. A “fresh” round-up of the “fresh” CSS techniques, tutorials and layouts. Links checked: May/17 2008.

You might be willing to check out our newer articles:

• Improving Code Readability With CSS Styleguides
• Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding
• 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding
• CSS Float Theory: Things You Should Know

CSS Diagrams, Bar Graphs, Star Rater

• CSS FOR BAR GRAPHS
  Basic CSS Bar Graph, Complex CSS Bar Graph, Vertical CSS Bar Graph
• Super simple CSS bars
  Tobias Lütke
• Creating a graph Russ Weakley - Creating a graph using percentage background images

  

• Dynamic Pie Chart with CSS
  This is an example of creating a semi-dynamic pie chart without the use of server-side imaging libraries
• CSS Diagrams
  Things to Do With CSS When You’re Bored at Work
• Star Rater
  Creating a Star Rater using CSS
• CSS Star Rating
  CSS Star Rating Part Deux
• Star Rater
  Example 1
• CSS Ratings Selector
  Using a list item to create a star rater
• Star Rater
  Example 3

CSS Forms

• Form layout
  Richard Rutter - clagnut blog
• Prettier Accessible Forms
  It can be time consuming to make web forms both pretty and accessible….

  

• Styling form controls
  Roger Johansson - 456 Berea Street
• Styling even more form controls
  Roger Johansson - 456 Berea Street
• Table-less Forms
  Most of the CSS-only, table-less forms available suck. So, not wanting to stoop to mediocrity, I decided to take on the task of coming up with something better. This is the result of my efforts…
• The Form Garden
  A CSS Stylesheet Collection for Web Forms

CSS Galleries

• CSS Reboot
  CSS Reboot is a community event for web professionals……
• CSS Table Gallery
  Data Tables and Cascading Style Sheets Gallery
• Data Tables and Cascading Style Sheets Gallery
  The CSS Table Gallery is a showcase of how CSS and data tables can work together to create usable and pretty results.
• Design Melt Down
  Design elements, trends, and problems in web design, examples and resources
• Layout Gala
  a collection of 40 CSS layouts based on the same markup and ready for download!
• Liquid Designs
  Liquid Designs is a gallery of websites designed with liquid layouts using XHTML and CSS
• netzfruehling - CSS Showcase Blog
  German Showcase Blog
• oswd - Open Source Web Design
  Download and upload free web designs
• tom.ma | screenblog
  A handpicked and growing collection of fine screendesigns.
• Unmatched Style
  Get inspiration from the CSS Gallery archives
• Web Creme
  Web design inspiration

CSS Image Maps, Image Switcher, Sliding Photograph Galleries

• CSS Image Maps
  Below is a sample image map that’s built entirely using CSS and XHTML…
• Map Pop
  This experiment uses CSS to create an image map with CSS pop-ups
• Simple CSS Image Switcher
  This is a pure CSS image switcher that is lightweight and standards-compliant. It could be used for a gallery or any similar function…..
• A Two Step Photograph Gallery
  Stu Nicholls
• Hoverbox Image Gallery
  …super light-weight (8kb) roll-over photo gallery that uses nothing but CSS…
• Sliding Photograph Galleries
  Stu Nicholls Photo Galleries - vertical slide & horizontal slide

CSS Layouts Templates

• CSS Layouts
  Stu Nicholls - Three columns, CSS frame, “Fixed”, Cross browser….
• CSS TEMPLATES
  All templates are XHTML 1.0 and CSS2
• css Zen Garden
  list of all Zen Garden designs added to date..980+ layouts
• Flexi-Floats
  3 Column CSS Layout - Fluid, Multi-Column Stretch - Header, Footer, Fluid Center - Fixed or Fluid widths
• Layout Gala
  by Alessandro Fulciniti - a collection of 40 CSS layouts based on the same markup and ready for download!
• Look Ma, No Tables.
  CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit
• ThreeColumnLayouts
  css-discuss - Bob Easton
• Open Source Web Design
  Download and upload free web designs
• Open Web Design
  Download and upload free web designs
• Sample CSS Page Layouts
  Here are a range of CSS page layouts, including 2 column and 3 column layouts - free to use and abuse as needed
• Yet Another Multicolumn Layout
  A multi-column layout

Lightboxes

• ThickBox 2.0
  Cody Lindley - ThickBox is a webpage UI dialog widget written in JavaScript on top of the jQuery library. Its function is to show a single image, multiple images, inline content, iframed content, or content served through AJAX in a hybrid modal.
• Lightbox Gone Wild!
  Particletree - Chris Campbell
• Suckerfish HoverLightbox
  Jonathan Christopher
• Lightbox JS v2.0
  by Lokesh Dhakar
• Leightbox
  Simon de Haan · Eight Media

CSS Lists, Navigation, Menus, Rollovers

• Turning a list into a navigation bar
  How to use CSS to create a horizontal navigation bar out of a simple ordered list
• Turning Lists into Trees
  by Michal Wojciechowski
• CSS menus gallery
  Here is a gallery of CSS web menus created with CSS style sheets and without tables
• Flexible navigation example
  The navigation bar shown here is achieved via 3 images, a bit of CSS and some JavaScript.
• Free CSS Navigation Menu Designs
  Free CSS Navigation Menu Designs at ExplodingBoy - Familiar to dozens
• Free Menu Designs
  Free Menu Designs - e-lusion.com
• FreeStyle Menus v1.0 RC9
  This is an XHTML compliant, CSS-formatted menu script, designed to work with the current generation of standards-based websites….
• More Free CSS Navigation Menu Designs
  More Free CSS Navigation Menu Designs at ExplodingBoy - Familiar to dozens.
• 14 Free Vertical CSS Menus
  14 Free Vertical CSS Menu at ExplodingBoy - Familiar to dozens
• CSS Menu Generator
  Our CSS Menu Generator will generate both the CSS and the HTML code required to produce a text-based yet appealing set of navigation buttons.
• CSS Tab Designer
  CSS Tab Designer is a unique and easy to use software to help you design css-based lists and tabs visually and without any programming knowledge required!
• Tabs
  BrainJar - “In this example, we’ll look at using CSS to build a tabbed display…”
• Mini Slide Navigation
  Sandbox - Stephen Clark
• Nested lists used to create a simple folder metaphore
  Here’s a rough and ready example showing how to make a folder analalogy using a nested list.
• Accessible Image-Tab Rollovers
  SimpleBits - Dan Cederholm - Accessible Image-Tab Rollovers
• Suckerfish Dropdowns
  example page for Suckerfish Dropdowns
• Fast Rollovers Without Preload
  When using CSS image rollovers, two, three, or more images must be loaded….
• Variations on a drop-down theme
  Stu Nicholls - CSSplay

Miscellaneous

• Architecting CSS
  The first step in architecting our CSS is to devise a plan for organizing our files…..
• CSS Organization
  Tip 1: Flags
• Beginner’s guide from a seasoned CSS designer
  Cameron Moll - Authentic Boredom
• CSS Advanced Guide
  The CSS Advanced Guide is for those who want to push CSS to the extreme, highlighting methods that might not be immediately obvious to the intermediate developer.
• CSS Panic Guide
  This is not a complete resource, this is a fast resource….
• CSS & Design Galleries
  List of CSS and Design Showcases
• CSS Table Gallery
  The CSS Table Gallery is a showcase of how CSS and data tables can work together to create usable and pretty results.
• Dynamic Drive CSS Library
  Practical CSS codes and examples
• CSSplay
  Stu Nicholls - Experiments with Cascading Style Sheets
• CSS tests and experiments
  Floats, Containers, margins, …Centering, Shrink wrapping, Images, Miscellaneous, hacks, inline-block, Layouts, Tables…
• Stylish
  Stylish allows easy management of user styles.
• CSSViewer
  A simple CSS property viewer.

Tips & Tricks

• All About CSS Drop Shadows
  By: John Gallant , Holly Bergevin
• :BefTer Drop Shadows
  Using :before and :after pseudo elements to create beautiful drop shadow on standard browsers. Use built-in drop-shadow filter for Ie.
• Fun with Drop Shadows
  Drop Shadows are a nice way to beautify images….
• CSS Browser Selector
  Simple trick to help you on CSS hacks!
• CSS filters (css hacks)
  Will the browser apply the rule(s)?
• Image Preloader
  maratz.com - Marko Dugonji
• Link Thumbnail
  Link Thumbnail shows users that are about to leave your site exactly where they’re going
• Pure CSS Popups
  Eric A. Meyer
• Smart Corners
  Using lightweight images, simple markup, and a small amount of CSS, I will demonstrate a method of creating round corners on elastic or liquid boxes
• Spanky Corners 1.1 beta
  Spanky Corners’ is an experimental technique for using only CSS to produce ’round-cornered content boxes’ with semantically pure markup. It does not require JavaScript to work
• “Sliding Doors” Box– Rounded Corners for All
  A Simple, Semantically Correct CSS Box with Clean Code
• Liquid round corners
  Adaptable rounded edges - a multifunctional flexible css-concept with transparency for creating dynamically changing not rectangular borders
• A More Accessible Map
  Is there a way to display text-based data on a map, keeping it accessible, useful and visually attractive?
• CSS-Schieberegler
  A Slider with CSS. Without Java, Javascript, Flash oder animated gifs
• Playing Cards with CSS
  This example demonstrates using CSS to graphically display standard playing cards on a web page…

Slideshows

• S5: An Introduction
  Eric A. Meyer - What Is S5? - It’s a Simple Standards-based Slide Show System
• HTML Slidy
  Dave Raggett - Slide Shows in XHTML
• S5Easy: Create S5 Slideshows Easy Online
  Create your slideshow in only 3 steps

CSS Tables

• CSS Table Gallery
  Data Tables and Cascading Style Sheets Gallery
• Better Zebra Tables
  Zebra Tables is a script that applies different background colors to odd or even table–rows…
• Pure CSS Scrollable Table with Fixed Header
  Using CSS to allow scrolling within a single HTML table

CSS (and JS)Tooltips

• Bubble Tooltips
  Bubble Tooltips are an easy way to add (via a bit of CSS and javascript) fancy tooltips with a balloon shape to any web page.
• qTip
  qTip will work on all like elements that are on the page. You can specify any HTML tag as your preferred element. Since the title attribute can be applied to any HTML element, this technique is standards compliant!
• Sweet Titles Finalized
  JavaScript Fading Tooltips

Articles

• CSS Standards
  Written by Christian Heilmann 01/2004
• CSS Frames v2, full-height
  Roger Johansson - 456 Berea Street -Create the visual effect of HTML frames with CSS and make the scrolling area stretch to 100 % height regardless of the amount of content.”
• CSS Hacks and IE7
  Position Is Everything - A discussion of the theory of CSS floating
• Creating Liquid Faux Columns
  By: Zoe Gillenwater
• Div Mania
  More and more web documents are appearing that consist of nothing more than a collection of div elements. In most cases, better use of CSS selectors could be used to avoid overusing the div element.
• Effective Style with em
  Jonathan Christopher
• Exploring Footers
  by Bobby van der Sluis
• footerStickAlt: A more robust method of positioning a footer
  Cameron Adams - The Man in Blue
• In search of the One True Layout
  Position Is Everything
• Is image replacement really worth it?
  Robert Nyman
• Make better Web pages by understanding the CSS box model
  by Contributor Melonfire
• The Most Common CSS Markup Errors
  Sean Fraser - The Elementary Group Standards
• Vertical Centering in CSS
  Yuhu’s Definitive Solution with Unknown Height

Tutorials

• Advanced CSS Layouts: Step by Step
  By Rogelio Vizcaino Lizaola and Andy King
• CSS Basics.com
  Making Cascading Style Sheets Easy to Understand
• CSS Beginner’s Guide
  CSS, or ‘Cascading Styles Sheets’ are a way to style HTML. Whereas the HTML is the content, the style sheet is the presentation of that document.
• CSS Intermediate Guide
  Like the HTML Intermediate Guide, this CSS Intermediate Guide should not be that difficult, but rather build on the basics of the CSS Beginner’s Guide.
• CSS Advanced Guide
  The CSS Advanced Guide is for those who want to push CSS to the extreme, highlighting methods that might not be immediately obvious to the intermediate developer.
• CSS Demonstrations and Tutorials
  CSS and HTML examples, demonstrations and tutorials
• CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit
  A resource for web designers and developers who want to learn CSS layout techniques to replace archaic table-based web page layouts..
• CSS Menu Tutorial
  Horizontal and Vertical CSS Menu Tutorials
• CSS Tutorial
  CSS Tutorial von w3schools.com
• CSS TUTORIAL
  The Complete CSS tutorial
• Floatutorial: Step by step CSS float tutorial
  Floatutorial takes you through the basics of floating elements such as images, drop caps, next and back buttons, image galleries, inline lists and multi-column layouts.
• Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps
  This tutorial examines the different layout properties available in CSS: position:static, position:relative, position:absolute, and float
• Listutorial: Step by step CSS list tutorial
  Listutorial takes you through the basics of building background image lists, rollover lists, nested lists and horizontal lists
• Selectutorial - CSS selectors
  Selectors are one of the most important aspects of CSS as they are used to “select” elements on an HTML page so that they can be styled.
  Find out more about selectors including the structure of rules, the document tree, types of selectors and their uses. There is also a step-by-step tutorial showing how selectors are used in the process of building a 3-column layout.
• Site in an Hour
  by Andrew Krespanis - Making Simple Work of Complex CSS Layouts
• Style master css tutorial
  hands on css tutorial - This tutorial teaches CSS using both hand-coding and Style Master for Windows.
• Online tutorials
  The House of Style has several cascading style sheets tutorials, with explanations, excercises and worked examples to get you up and running with style sheets as quickly as possible.
• Stylesheets
  Cascading style sheets tutorials and style guide