CategoryTechniques

July 24, 2024 — Joas Pambou built an app that integrates vision language models (VLMs) and text-to-speech (TTS) AI technologies to describe images audibly with speech. This audio description tool can be a big help for people with sight challenges to understand what’s in an image. But how this does it even work? Joas explains how these AI systems work and their potential uses, including how he built the app and ways to further improve it. Read more…

June 14, 2024 — What are these CSS Container Style Queries, and why should you use them? Juan Diego Rodríguez delves deeply into style queries, and not at the syntax level, but at what exactly they are solving and what sort of use cases you would find yourselves reaching for them in your work if and when they gain browser support. Read more…

May 24, 2024 — After years of relying on checkbox hacks to create a “switch” control for forms that toggle between two states, HTML may be gaining a native way to go about it by adding a switch attribute to checkbox inputs. Daniel Yuschick walks us through a first impression of switch controls and discusses current and ongoing considerations that need to be explored further before it is ready for prime time. Read more…

May 22, 2024 — It’s easy to get lost in a sea of CSS frameworks and libraries, each promising easier styling and smoother layouts. Brecht De Ruyte demonstrates four CSS utility classes (plus a bonus) using techniques that allow them to be used practically anywhere you need a particular layout — be it Grid or Flexbox — with configurable options. Read more…

May 16, 2024 — Juan Diego Rodriguez explains why media queries still occupy a vital role in responsive layouts; only they are now one tool in a larger toolbox with modern techniques that are best when used together. Read more…

May 2, 2024 — Amit Sheen demonstrates using :has() to apply styles conditionally when a certain <option> in a <select> element is chosen by the user and how we gain even more conditional styling capabilities when chaining :has() with other pseudo-classes, such as :not() — no JavaScript necessary. Read more…

April 17, 2024 — What do you do when you need to convert plain text into formatted HTML? Perhaps you reach for Markdown or manually write in the element tags yourself. Or maybe you have one or two of the dozens of online tools that will do it for you. In this tutorial, Alexis Kypridemos picks those tools apart and details the steps for how we can do it ourselves with a little vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Read more…

April 12, 2024 — Creating 3D effects in CSS isn’t an entirely new concept, but typical approaches use additional elements in the markup and pseudo-elements in the styles to pull it off. Temani Afif applies 3D effects and sliding transitions to a single <img> using clever CSS techniques that demonstrate advanced, modern styling practices. Read more…

April 2, 2024 — Remember the HTML <marquee> element? It’s deprecated, so it’s not like you’re going to use it when you need some sort of horizontal auto-scrolling feature. That’s where CSS comes in because it has all the tools we need to pull it off. Silvestar Bistrović demonstrates a technique that makes it possible with a set of images and as little HTML as possible. Read more…

March 25, 2024 — There are many ways to approach a “Dark Mode” feature that respects a user’s system color scheme preferences and allows for per-site customization. Henry Bley-Vroman walks through a new possibility that leans into cutting-edge CSS, with minimal JavaScript to support persisting the user’s color scheme preference across pages. Read more…