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General CSS Articles

  • Units of Measurement
    The CSS Standard defines several different units of measurement; Some of them are absolute values, while others are relative values that are calculated when the document is rendered. This article expands on each unit type, provides usage examples, and organizational tips.

  • The Box Model
    The Box Model is at the heart of the document rendering process. It's one of the basic building blocks that defines how browsers convert CSS Rules and HTML/XHTML Markup into pixels on our screens. Better understanding of this mechanism leads to better implementation of CSS properties in general, and helps in solving issues along the design process.

  • The Document Tree
    The Document Tree is the relational structure of both HTML and XHTML documents. CSS inheritance, cascade, selectors, and relative unit calculations depend on this relational model. It's not that complicated of a data structure, and understanding it properly is crucial to implementing anything above the most elementary CSS rules.

  • CSS Selectors: Part 1
    When you design CSS Rules, most of the focus is on the properties that are applied to the rule. CSS Rules, however, are defined by two things: Their properties, and their Selector Definition. the Selector defines what the properties of the rule apply to. The first part of CSS Selectors covers the basic selector types and how you would implement them efectively.

  • CSS Selectors: Part 2
    In Part 2 of CSS Selectors, link-related and pseudo-class selectors are explained, and the more 'exotic' selectors are covered. As well, browser compatibilities and rule ordering is expanded upon.

  • CSS Style Rule Management
    Just like knowing about each and every CSS property isn't enough to know how to combine them properly to achieve the most effective results, knowing about selector implementation rules isn't enough to know how to combine them into an overall scheme that will be customizable, scalable, and portable. Here are some broad concepts that should help in that direction.

  • Floating Elements
    One of the most powerful features of CSS, and yet so little of its true potential is used. Floating Elements allows you to change the way you think about the flow of the document's content, and specifically about the behaviour of block elements. This is quite the long introduction to the subject, but it really does deserve proper coverage in order to understand its potential uses.

  • CSS Image Techniques: Part 1
    There are quite a few tricks you can pull by combining bitmap images with the right CSS properties. In fact, there are so many methods which use CSS to "manipulate" images that several articles are needed just to cover the more commonly used techniques. This first installment covers 'Image Arrays', a method which allows you to call a single image file within a document and use multiple sub-images from within it.

Styling Specific Elements

  • CSS Lists: Part 1
    Way back when, HTML Lists served solely as documentational aids in textual articles. While they still serve this purpose today, they've gained a new purpose as active navigational elements, and for good reasons. In the first part of CSS Lists, the basics of how to transform a plain Unordered List into a navigational link list are covered.

  • CSS Lists: Part 2
    Part 2 of CSS Lists goes into the subtleties of how HTML/XHTML lists are interpreted by the browser, the independant internal elements that make up a list, and how to style each of these elements. More advanced styling techniques are covered, and several browser incompatibilities are tackled.

  • CSS Lists: Part 3
    Horizontal lists are adaptive to text width, which makes them spatially effecient compared to vertical lists. Part 3 of CSS Lists covers horizontal lists, and how to style them, as well as transform them into active navigational elements within a page.

  • Styling Links: Part 1 - Inline Links
    Styling links around a web site is one of the most interesting design tasks in the process, but there are quite a few things to take into consideration, as well as many tricks and hacks that one can employ when designing link pseudo-classes. Part 1 of Styling Links covers styling inline links.

  • Styling Links: Part 2 - Block Links
    In modern browsers, links need not be solely thought of as either text spans or images. You can turn almost anything into a link. Part 2 of Syling Links covers styling Block Links.

  • Styling Forms
    If you've ever tried to style a long form, you know that it's not something to look forward to. Actually, CSS does provide more than most designers are aware of in this department. This article focuses specifically on how to style HTML/XHTML forms.








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