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Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding
February 21st, 2008 in CSS | 192 Comments
Sometimes being a web-developer is just damn hard. Particularly coding is often responsible for slowing down our workflow, reducing the quality of our work and sleepless nights with pizza and coffee laying around the laptop. Reason: with a number of incompatibility issues and quite creative rendering engines it sometimes takes too much time to find a workaround for some problem without addressing browsers with quirky hacks. And that’s where ready-to-use solutions developed by other designers come in handy.
One year ago we’ve published the post with 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without where we provided references to the most useful CSS-techniques which are often used in almost every project. Over the last year we’ve been observing what’s happening with the CSS-based web-development, and we collected most useful CSS-techniques we’ve stumbled upon — for us and for our readers.
In this post we present 50 new CSS-techniques, ideas and ready-to-use solutions for effective coding. You definitely know some of them, but definitely not all of them. Some technique is missing? Let us know in the comments to this post.
Thanks to all developers who contributed to the CSS-based design over the last year. The community appreciates it.
CSS-Techniques
1. Triadic Background Setting with CSS
The Silverback web site uses three background images to create the illusion of 3D with simple CSS. No documentation is provided, however the source code is quite intuitive. [via Wilson Miner]
2. Creative Use of PNG Transparency in Web Design
With proper PNG support in Internet Explorer 7, and some handy JavaScript and CSS tricks to account for older browsers, we can use PNG images to greatly enhance our design vocabulary.
3. CSS Server-Side Pre-Processor
5. CSS SiteMap
6. Styling File Inputs with CSS and the DOM
File inputs (<input type=”file” />) are the bane of beautiful form design. No rendering engine provides the granular control over their presentation designers desire. This simple, three-part progressive enhancement provides the markup, CSS, and JavaScript to address the long-standing irritation.
7. A Savvy Approach to Copyright Messaging
Derek Powazek suggests adding a copyright message to a photo and use CSS to crop its view. This is supposed to accomplish the goal of adding robust copyright information without defacing your own work.
9. Advanced CSS Menu Trick
What we want to do here, is instead of simply altering the state of the navigation item the user is currently rolling over, we want to alter the non navigation items as well.
10. CSS hover effect
11. Creating a table with dynamically highlighted columns like Crazy Egg’s pricing table
12. A Stripe of List Style Inspiration
A different type of list and navbar styling. As stripes.
13. Rediscovering the Button Element
14. Dynamic CSS With Variables
Geoffrey Grosenbach describes how you can integrate CSS variables in CSS coding — with Ruby on Rails.
15. Hyperlink Cues with Favicons
I wanted to extend the concept of hyperlink cues a little. For links that point to external sites, what if, instead of showing a generic ‘external link’ icon, we showed that site’s favicon?
16. A CSS styled table version 2
17. CSS Step Menu
A method of designing the so-called step-menus, which have some steps users have to go through in order to achieve some aim. This menu offers a varying amount of steps, dependent upon the type of user accessing the application.
18. Creating bulletproof graphic link buttons with CSS | 456 Berea Street
19. Iconize Textlinks with CSS
Links are fun, but sometimes we don’t know where they take us. With this little CSS technique a user can identify a link by its icon. The updated release of the technique.
20. Better Ordered Lists (Using Simple PHP and CSS)
Ordered lists are boring! Sure you can apply background images and do quite a bit of sprucing up to a regular ordered list, but you just don’t get enough control over the number itself.
21. Circular Menu with CSS
This article shows how a beautiful circular navigation menu is created. In Spanish with Source code and an example.
22. CSS Dock Menu
23. Digg-like navigation bar using CSS
This tutorial explains how to design a digg-like navigation bar using a liquid design with rounded corners for links.
24. 13 Awesome Javascript CSS Menus
13 “fresh” JavaScript+CSS-based navigation menus in a brief overview. Among other things Slashdot Menu and Sexy Sliding Menu displayed below.
25. CSS Pricing Matrix
A CSS-based matrix in which clicking on a highlights the associated cell in the top row and left column giving an indication of relationships among the provided information. Similar solution: Tablecloth.
26. CSS List Expander
So, we have an unordered list that can go on in depth as much as we want. The script analyzes the list tree and applies toggle functions for expanding/collapsing child objects.
27. How to create VISTA style toolbar with CSS
Reproducing Vista toolbar, with buttons and hover effect in cross-browser compatible CSS and (X)HTML.
28. Fade Out Bottom
This is a demonstration of the effect where the bottom of the page seems to fade out. The technique makes use of an fixed position div (bottom: 0%) with a transparent PNG image and a high z-index value.
29. Scrollovers - A New Way of Linking
Everyone is familiar with hover-effects. This CSS+JavaScript-based techniques creates the Scrolleffect - not really necessary, but it’s nice to know, how it can be done.
30. How to Style an A to Z Index with CSS
31. CSS List Boxes
Using a simple unordered list this experiment aligns the boxes across the page with the end result being to showcase items like services, products, or specials. One of cool thing about this — if you turn off styles — is the extractable semantics with the headings and paragraphs used.
32. How-to create a “Table of Contents” Navigation
In as little as 8 lines of HTML, and 5 lines of CSS, the Table Of Contents Navigation block can be integrated in your site ready for even more styling.
34. Partial Opacity
35. Simple Round CSS Links (Wii Buttons)
36. How to make sexy buttons with CSS
37. CSS Pull Quotes
38. Drop Shadow CSS
39. CSS Speech Bubbles
Easy to customize speech bubbles coded in CSS and valid XHTML 1.0 strict.Tested in all major browsers.
40. CSS Double Lists
42. Better Email Links: Featuring CSS Attribute Selectors
Learn how to generate code for displaying the e-mail automatically once mailto is used. CSS Attribute Selectors in action which is not supported by Internet Explorer 6 and 7.
43. CSS: Menu Descriptions
This is a CSS technique that could be useful if you want to give users accessible added content such as tool-tips, notifications, or alerts, without adding unnecessary clutter to your page. And since it doesn’t rely of JavaScript, it should be useful to everyone, even disabled users.
Further Techniques
44. CSS Transparency Settings for All Browsers
45. Time Sensitive CSS Switcher
CSS Switching script that changes style sheet based on time of day.
46. Custom Reading Containers
This amazing little script allows the user to resize any container.
48. PNG Overlay
Create a transparent PNG overlay which can be used as a mask / frame around regular JPEG or GIF so users can upload photos without having to worry about using any graphics program to apply filters, plus it saves time.
50. Create Resizable Images With CSS
eren emre (February 21st, 2008, 10:35 am)
I got lost in this source!
: )
Noupe (February 21st, 2008, 10:36 am)
Thanks for linking our article. You have some great collection of css techniques over here :)
We have created 2 round-ups of CSS techniques that have some other great CSS Techniques that we can find handy.
Link [www.noupe.com]
Link [www.noupe.com]
Mike (February 21st, 2008, 10:39 am)
awesome collection, as always.
tnx!
lica (February 21st, 2008, 10:44 am)
Great list. Another reason for me to procrastinate at work!!
Lisa (February 21st, 2008, 10:59 am)
I was just wondering why you keep reposting the same items in multiple articles.
Sure, this one has many awesome new things, but many of them I’ve already seen before on your site.
What’s going on?
Dejan (February 21st, 2008, 11:28 am)
nice list
Thomassl (February 21st, 2008, 11:31 am)
You guys are too awesome. I mean it! If it weren’t for you, I would still be a total newbie.
Thanks! Keep it up, please.
Thomas, 14 years
Evangelist (February 21st, 2008, 11:31 am)
Thanks for the list - very useful - will keep me busy for a while!!!
Creativepayne (February 21st, 2008, 11:34 am)
Awesome! I know what I’m doing tonight.
Thanks
Dave (February 21st, 2008, 11:48 am)
I find all of your articles useful, but this particular article is the best I’ve seen yet. Thank you.
Mini0n (February 21st, 2008, 11:55 am)
Nice!
An excelent colection! Keep up the good work! =)
Braintrove.com (February 21st, 2008, 12:21 pm)
Great set of resources. Keep ‘em coming!
MIke (February 21st, 2008, 12:43 pm)
Holy smokin’ list o’ links! Guh! I’m rethinking various UI stuff now. Awesome collection!
Junni (February 21st, 2008, 1:18 pm)
Am I glad that I just inserted Smashingmagazine rss into my rss application! Very handy overview.
robotoverlord (February 21st, 2008, 1:31 pm)
Nice list, I’m resolved to do my next big project with pngs! Smashmag kicks ass.
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (February 21st, 2008, 2:21 pm)
@Lisa: “I was just wondering why you keep reposting the same items in multiple articles.”
We appreciate your concern, Lisa. However, it’s important to us that these useful resources are available to web-developers right away, so you don’t have to search through dozens of posts which cover not only CSS, but also other things. We try to do our best to make it as easy as possible to find these resources. This is what the whole thing is all about. This article is an example for exactly that.
Tyson (February 21st, 2008, 3:07 pm)
Keep up the good work!!
Wezy (February 21st, 2008, 3:15 pm)
Very useful post for techniques and inspiration.
Assault T-Shirts (February 21st, 2008, 3:20 pm)
I’ve been trying to figure out for awhile how Apple did their rounded form field on their homepage and got it to show up nicely in Safari 1.x
I got my form fields hidden by hiding the border and making it white, but Safari 1.x still shows the ugly form field… anyone seen anything on this?
Gene (February 21st, 2008, 3:47 pm)
Reading this shows just how much there is to learn. Great list. New things to try.
Stefan (February 21st, 2008, 3:55 pm)
I love you :)
Ian (February 21st, 2008, 4:09 pm)
Amazing List. Thanks.
Mike (February 21st, 2008, 5:06 pm)
You’ve duplicated a paragraph in the introduction.
You’ve duplicated a paragraph in the introduction.
Handy resource, I will try to refer to this article regularly.
mel (February 21st, 2008, 5:52 pm)
wow, I have about 40 new side-projects :)
Richie K (February 21st, 2008, 8:15 pm)
“Time Sensitive CSS Switcher”
this is the stuff i’m looking for..now if they can change the whole content
prior to within times..that’ll be even greater :D
thanks for compiling the list for us css geek….
hieu (February 21st, 2008, 9:01 pm)
Oh my god, so may useful techniques. Thanks for collecting!!!
manish (February 21st, 2008, 10:31 pm)
If u keep posting articles like this i can never call myself a CSS expert ;-)
Thanks for great list ;-)
dagobert (February 21st, 2008, 11:08 pm)
Best article ever.
Liina (February 21st, 2008, 11:49 pm)
My only thought after this post was that i love you :) Thanks for that!
skr15 (February 21st, 2008, 11:54 pm)
Awesome list!
This article goes far beyond any other I’ve seen
Keep it up!
bali web designer (February 21st, 2008, 11:58 pm)
Excellent list as usual :) vote for dock icon from ndesign-studio, i use it on my website Link [www.chazzuka.com]
SITS Hannover (February 22nd, 2008, 12:18 am)
An awesome collection of useful resources. Thank you!
Mithun (February 22nd, 2008, 1:28 am)
Awesome!!
latejedora (February 22nd, 2008, 2:19 am)
great! just added to my fav’s!!
Simon (February 22nd, 2008, 2:29 am)
Yet another incredibly inspiring list. Why would we expect anything less? Thanx
kidsinhalf (February 22nd, 2008, 3:08 am)
Great list.
The title is in my opinion non appropriate. Most effects are combination of CSS AND Javascript.
superxtian (February 22nd, 2008, 3:22 am)
CSS is the best!
sofasurfer (February 22nd, 2008, 3:55 am)
what to say? SM is the best! great post. Where I’m I going to find time to explore most of the examples shown here? :)
rohaan03 (February 22nd, 2008, 4:14 am)
wow
rubber (February 22nd, 2008, 4:54 am)
Very useful tricks. Thanks
kik (February 22nd, 2008, 4:55 am)
the best post ever :)
Vincent McAulay (February 22nd, 2008, 5:01 am)
Superb!
harsha (February 22nd, 2008, 5:14 am)
Damn Good
Damjan Mozetič (February 22nd, 2008, 5:25 am)
This is quite a selection of techniques! And I must say, some are even new to me :)
Reynder (CSS) (February 22nd, 2008, 6:01 am)
Wow. So much to learn still. Great inspiration!!
vivek (February 22nd, 2008, 6:02 am)
Thanks for pointing out “Table of Contents” CSS example.
Cheers
Ganesh (February 22nd, 2008, 6:17 am)
Hey thats neat..especially the Vista style CSS
james (February 22nd, 2008, 6:21 am)
Brilliant. Great list.
Craig (February 22nd, 2008, 6:24 am)
Awesome, very nicely done ’smashing’
Venkadesan Tharshan (February 22nd, 2008, 6:30 am)
thanks.
Sherry (February 22nd, 2008, 6:33 am)
13. Rediscovering the Button Element
Love this tip; not many people are aware of the power that css has over buttons. Great article, thanks.
Sherry (February 22nd, 2008, 6:36 am)
#13. Rediscovering the Button Element
Love this tip; not many people are aware of the power that css has over buttons. Great article, thanks.
Link [www.spymac.com]
Alen (February 22nd, 2008, 6:50 am)
Nice collection, and thank you for including my article :)
lingo (February 22nd, 2008, 7:29 am)
This site is always a pleasure to look at… so much great stuff it is ridiculous. If my boss only knew how much time was spent on your site…
donnie (February 22nd, 2008, 7:43 am)
#1. Should’nt one image be enough? What is the reason for using three images?
Christopher (February 22nd, 2008, 8:10 am)
Great list! One thing I wish to goodness I could find again is a CSS experiment site that used two different background images on the header so the right side was different from the left.
The page was flexible and the right/left images were 100% of the horizontal viewport.
Anyone know the technique I’m talking about or seen a similar site? The one I saw, just a few months ago, was for a mock beachwear/surf type company. I kick myself everyday for not bookmarking it!
Fred Clown (February 22nd, 2008, 10:04 am)
@ donnie
I too wondered that at first … why not just use one image? The reason is (I think) because you can tile each image separately and get a more random look. For instance the front image on a 1280×1024 screen tiles twice. The mid one tiles 1 and a little times. The back image tiles about three times. It just allows for more randomness without having to make a really large and long top image. All in all a pretty good idea.
donnie (February 22nd, 2008, 12:10 pm)
@Fred Clown
Yes I see it now. Different browser width generates different backgrounds. Did’nt see it earlier. =)
Stever (February 22nd, 2008, 1:20 pm)
Oh Thank You, oh thank you. I needed this.
CSS frustrates me to no end sometimes. I often wish I could trap and skin that damn fire fox. An inhumane leg hold trap at that. Other times I wish a hired gun would take out the entire IE development team, starting with the guy at the top. If i had my choice it would be the hit on MSN staffers before trapping that pesky fox. Definitely. Its far easier to tame the fox than it is to control that ignorant 800 pound gorilla.
recluxus (February 22nd, 2008, 1:58 pm)
useful content, thanks.
Tyler @ Building Camelot (February 22nd, 2008, 2:02 pm)
You guys always amaze me! This is an awesome article…thank you for taking the time to put this together.
Wikigiz.com (February 22nd, 2008, 10:30 pm)
I learned some neat tricks. Thanks!
alf (February 23rd, 2008, 12:53 am)
nice article, useful links.. thanks ..
Paul Annett (February 23rd, 2008, 2:57 am)
Thanks for including Link [clearleft.com]’s Silverback app faux-3D holding page - glad you like it! Though I’m slightly confused why you’d expect documentation to be included. How many websites include instructions on how they were made? Having said that, many people have asked for it and we will be publishing a short tutorial soon.
Jarek (February 23rd, 2008, 6:39 pm)
Great list for web developer .Thanks
Average Joe Helpers (February 24th, 2008, 1:12 am)
This is actually something we have been looking for to further our website. We’ll have to implement some of this stuff, thanks :)
prreya (February 24th, 2008, 3:35 am)
superb resource,love u gyies for this
tacoen (February 24th, 2008, 9:32 am)
Finally on 25th Feb 2008. I got a reason to say a Happy New Years!!! LOL Thank you Smashing Magazine!
David Jacques-Louis (February 24th, 2008, 9:49 am)
Live it. Wow.
Jones de Richards (February 25th, 2008, 12:54 am)
Phenomenally Huge Link [www.spymac.com]
Robin Titus (February 25th, 2008, 7:08 am)
You guys rock!
Martin Staněk (February 25th, 2008, 10:54 am)
To be honest, I expected CSS techniques in this article. Examples presented above show mostly various design techniques using CSS and Javascript. Therefore the article should have different heading… CSS techniques are for example CSS reset, hierarchical styling, using pseudoselectors, hacks and so on…
pickupjojo (February 25th, 2008, 7:20 pm)
Great tips! Now I have to make my forms looking better… :)
Amr Elsehemy (February 25th, 2008, 11:53 pm)
Wow what a nice list, thanks
Paul Annett (February 27th, 2008, 8:24 am)
Here’s a tutorial on the faux-3D effect used on the Silverback holding page.
Link [www.thinkvitamin.com]
Alfonso Marcos Vidal de la O (February 28th, 2008, 2:41 am)
Great article! About PNG transparency AlphaImageLoader on “” elements we´ll find the solution on 49abcnews.com code: Using conditional comments + CSS like this:
XHTML
“”
CSS
“#element {
background-image: none;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”http://media.49abcnews.com/img/trans-white-20.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);
}”
Alfonso Marcos Vidal de la O (February 28th, 2008, 2:59 am)
Great article! About PNG transparency AlphaImageLoader on div, span, tables… elements, without a .js file, we´ll find the solution on 49abcnews.com code: Using conditional comments and CSS like this:
CSS
#element {
background-image: none;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”http://media.49abcnews.com/img/trans-white-20.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);
}
An example applying a shadow-effect over gradient background image:
Link [www.alcarriarural.es]
Alfonso Marcos Vidal de la O (February 28th, 2008, 3:01 am)
Great article! About PNG transparency AlphaImageLoader on div, span, tables… elements, without a .js file, we´ll find the solution on 49abcnews.com code: Using conditional comments and CSS like this:
CSS
#element {
background-image: none;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”http://media.49abcnews.com/img/trans-white-20.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);
}
An example applying a shadow-effect over gradient background image:
Link [www.alcarriarural.es]
dharma (February 29th, 2008, 2:49 am)
I came to smashing magazine originally for CSS and lately there have been a dearth of good CSS related posts, but this one filled that void. Awesome smashing post, keep em coming!
Link [dharma.indviews.com]
Ralph (February 29th, 2008, 10:30 am)
Thank you for your great job. There are much great ideas to discover….
From Germany
Ralph
Adrian (February 29th, 2008, 10:16 pm)
haha I LOVE the favicon hyperlink cues. I’ve got to implement that. Excellent list as usual!
Rob (March 4th, 2008, 7:10 am)
Nifty tool for css coders: Link [lab.xms.pl]. Saving you the time needed to write xhtml.
anon (March 6th, 2008, 4:00 am)
RE: #50. resizing images with text - one word - Opera
bring on the browsers that support vector graphics.
Lawrence (March 7th, 2008, 7:16 am)
wow. that’s all i can say. thanks!
Dennison Uy - Graphic Designer (March 8th, 2008, 8:23 am)
Awesome list. Dugg!
Jens Meiert (March 12th, 2008, 3:22 am)
Again, I hope I may point to a method that helps judging these techniques [1]. Some are in fact quite good, others might be “worth reconsideration”.
[1] Great CSS Techniques
Christian (March 15th, 2008, 11:20 am)
I love Tip 19. Iconize Textlinks with CSS - It’s so simple and yet effective
Since this is my first comment on this page I want to congratulate you guys for this fantastic resource of inspiration.
Many thanks
Christian
Venki (March 18th, 2008, 4:31 am)
I Like all the Css . These are all possible in GWT. I want to Apply These All css in GWT. I dont Know GHow to Apply .Please replay me any ones Nows.
venki (March 18th, 2008, 4:35 am)
I want to apply these CSS in GWT is it Possible?.. Any one Know Pls Reply.
Kyle (March 18th, 2008, 10:59 am)
We love that CSS sitemap. We use it all the time now to give our clients an easy-to-read prototype of their sitemap before actually building the site.
We just built Link [sitemappers.com] to help us make these sitemaps (because we’re too lazy to keep typing out HTML).
Go ahead and play with it
Edwin (March 24th, 2008, 6:44 am)
Great collection!
rakesh.s (April 3rd, 2008, 10:03 am)
Simply superb !!! Such an inspiring collection of wonderful scripts and ides.. Kudos to all who worked behind this :-)
tarusexpert (April 28th, 2008, 10:24 am)
Nice collection, indeed! Thank you.