Web Design Tutorials

Here’s a CSS3 property that has very little support and that I’m not sure has too many real world applications or if it would even be extremely beneficial — the CSS3 resize property.

The resize property is part of the W3C’s Basic User Interface Module, which is in the candidate recommendation stage.

Unfortunately, the resize property is listed in the Features at Risk section of that same document, so it’s quite possible that this feature will be removed if browser-makers don’t support it. Nonetheless, here’s a quick review of exactly what this property is all about so you can decide if it’s of any practical use in your projects.

The main reason CSS attribute selectors have been avoided up to this point is their complete lack of support in IE6. But since IE6’s market share is continuing to slowly but steadily decline, it’s becoming safer to use them.

I’m not going to go through the basics of CSS attribute selectors and their syntax. There are some pretty good resources explaining them, which I’ll link to at the bottom of this post. So if you don’t have at least some grasp of what this CSS feature is all about, please check those out first.

This article will go a little further and focus on some interesting facts and bugs surrounding attribute selectors that you may not have known.

One of the layout issues that has for years plagued CSS developers is the concept of clearing floats. There have been numerous articles and comment debates discussing what is the best way to clear your floats.

One method that was proposed back in 2005 was to simply add “overflow: auto” or “overflow: hidden” to the containing element in order to easily clear the floated children.

I think this is, overall, a pretty good way to clear floats. But, as with any CSS workaround, there is a potential drawback if this method is used on a large containing element.

One of the primary challenges that arises when dealing with CSS3 properties is the maintenance of the different proprietary prefixes. At least one solution has been offered to help prevent the so-called “forking” that results.

I think there is another way to help maintain the various repetitive CSS3 properties. What I’m proposing here will prevent you from having to organize your proprietary properties and will solve the problem of having to repeat the same values over and over again.

Some of the maintenance issues that arise can be avoided if you use PHP to generate your CSS, and use PHP’s capabilities to abstract a multiple lines of CSS3 into a single line.

The CSS2.1 spec introduced a new technique allowing developers to combine three CSS properties and a pseudo-element to create auto-incrementing counters — similar to what is displayed in an ordered list.

While counters for lists are limited to <ol> or <ul> elements and only with simple incrementation, the new counter method introduced in CSS2.1 allows for integers to be prepended to any set of elements, and is quite flexible.

This technique is a bit confusing because it uses multiple CSS properties, and looks different than most CSS code. I hope to clarify how it’s used and I’ll run down some possible ways it can be implemented, along with some benefits and drawbacks.

I don’t think I’ve seen this specific method used yet, but it seems like one of those super obvious techniques. This technique is not really anything new, it just combines two concepts that most CSS developers should be fairly well familiar with by now.

CSS sprites are a method for creating complex rollovers without using JavaScript.

CSS3 animations (or more accurately, CSS3 transitions) is a new feature that has been added to some newer browsers, most notably WebKit-based browsers like Chrome and Safari. Like sprites, CSS3 animations don’t require JavaScript.