Learning CSS in 2021 - Livestream with Kevin Powell

The great and powerful CSS master @Kevin Powell has given me some of his time to ask him some questions and talk about learning CSS in 2021.

We will hopefully have some time later in the stream for a Q&A.

#css #web-development #programming #developer

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CSS FlexBox Cheat Sheets for Web Developers in 2021

It’s 2021! Let’s refresh Our CSS Flexbox  Memory. Here’s a Cheat Sheet of everything you can do with CSS flexbox to get started in 2021

#css3 #learn-flexbox-css #flexbox-tutorials #learn-css #web-development #learn-web-development #learning-css

An Introduction to CSS Variables

This article is part 1 out of 3 articles detailing CSS files. You can find links to the other two at the bottom of this page.

One of the biggest issues with writing large amounts of CSS is keeping things consistent. For example, in a large codebase a single color can be used hundreds of times in hundreds of places. This repetition makes maintenance difficult as a simple design tweak like changing a color can result in that change needing to be made in many, many places.

CSS pre-processors like Sass and Less attempt to solve this particular problem (and others) by including variables. Variables let you set common values like colors and sizes in a single place then reference the variable when you need to use those values. Now a simple color change only needs to be made in one place.

Modern CSS, though, is very powerful and CSS now has native support for variables. You don’t need any build tools or pipelines; they are just part of the language. The code you write is the code that the browser uses. Formally, variables are “custom properties” but are commonly referred to simply as variables. Let’s explore how they can be used and how they can make writing CSS a much better experience.

Declaring and Using Variables

One of the telling things about the name “custom properties” is that they are CSS properties. Since they are properties, they have to be declared within a CSS rule like any other property:

/* Nope! */
--brand-color: #003d7d;

.foo {
    /* Yep! */
    --brand-color: #003d7d;
}

To differentiate variables from standard properties, they must start with --. Any name can be used though, so long as you only use letters, numbers, and dashes. Remember that they are case-sensitive, so --foo and --Foo are not the same variable.

Variables are also part of the normal cascade of CSS properties. This effectively means that you will want to declare your global variables on the highest element in the document tree, which is almost always html. But if you have styles that apply to the html element and want to keep your variable declarations separate, a common practice is to use the :root pseudo-class:

:root {
    --brand-color: #003d7d;
}

The values of your variables can be many different things as basically any valid CSS value can be the value of a variable. Sizes and colors are just the beginning as entire border and background values can also be stored. You can also use the value from one variable to set another. The possibilities are endless.

:root {
    --brand-color: #003d7d;
    --spacing: 4px;
    --spacing-large: calc(var(--spacing) * 2);
    --border: 2px solid var(--brand-color);
    --info-icon-bg-image: url('data:/...');
}

In the code sample above, you probably noticed how we access the value of variables: the var() function. The first parameter to that function should be the variable you need the value from. The second (optional) parameter is used as a fallback value. This is useful if you are not sure if a variable has been set and can be used for all sorts of fun tricks.

:root {
    --some-color: #003d7d;
}

.widget {
    background-color: var(--some-color);
    font-size: var(--font-size, 16px);
}

In that example, since we did not declare a --font-size variable, var() will return 16px since that is the fallback value. Note that only the first value is considered the variable to evaluate and, like the values of variables, the fallback value can contain commas. For example, var(–foo, red, blue) defines a fallback of red, blue and not two separate fallback values.

#css #learning-css #css-fundamentals #learn-css #software-development

Creating a CSS Visual Cheatsheet

The other day one of our students asked about possibility of having a CSS cheatsheet to help to decide on the best suited approach when doing this or that layout.

This evolved into the idea of making a visual CSS cheatsheet with all (most) of the common patterns we see everyday and one of the best possible conceptual implementation for them.

In the end any layout could and should be split into parts/blocks and we see every block separately.

Here is our first take on that and we would be happy to keep extending it to help us all.

Please, send you suggestions in the comments in community or via gitlab for the repeated CSS patterns with your favourite implementation for that so that we will all together make this as useful as it can be.

#css #css3 #cascading-style-sheets #web-development #html-css #css-grids #learning-css #html-css-basics

This CSS Cut Out Effect is Guaranteed to Blow Your Mind 🤯

This effect is so cool and just fun to see. What it comes down to is having a background image show through the text.

How it works is that we will have a div that will have the image as a background. On that, we put our text element, using blend-mode it will show through the image.

The result you can see and touch on this Codepen.

#css #css3 #html-css #css-grids #learning-css #html-css-basics

CSS Flex Box: A Flexible Way To Layout

Every element of HTML is a rectangular box. Every Box has a defined height and width. This way you can increase or decrease its size. CSS is used to style HTML elements so that they look nice and decorated. CSS treats every element in the view of its box model. So every element has padding, margin, and border too.

You can learn more about CSS BOX Model here.

Box layout means to position a box on the page. So you may like to center an element horizontally or vertically or you may want to move the element to any other position on the page. Laying out your page is the most important task which determines the overall look of the page.

CSS has got many ways to align a box. You could choose floats, position property or you could try aligning it using margin and padding. But it’s not always so easy to align an element as you wish to. Developers have always been having difficulties to center an element horizontally or vertically. If you try using floats, you will see that it requires more work and gives you extra lines of code to position the element. So what’s the way out?

Here comes the modern CSS Flex Box technique. After using Flex Box for the first time you will forget the difficulties you have been facing with your layout. You will make your layout with fewer lines of code and very quickly.

Now after having Flex Box in your hand you don’t need to worry about every single element in your container. What you need is just add one or two lines of code and there you go.

What Are Some Of The Most Popular Uses Of Flex Box?

You can use Flex Box Almost anywhere on your website to align your content, but I found it more useful to apply it on certain parts of my page than others.

1: Navigation bar

The Navigation menu is mostly a horizontal or vertical bar on top or side of the page with links to other parts of the page. You can create a container for it and apply Flex Box to it so that you can move it’s items wherever it’s suitable for your page layout.

2: Footer

Footer of a website mostly includes contact details, logo, and some links to other parts of the site. You can align your footer content with the help of Flex Box too.

3: Horizontal Alignment

You can align your container’s elements on the horizontal line wherever you like and can add space in them.

4: Vertical Alignment

It often requires to position elements vertically, so there is a very easy way to achieve it with Flex Box. You just need to add one line and it’s already done.

4: Re-Ordering Elements

Flex Box has a function that allows you to rearrange the order of your elements in a container. You can change the order of any element you like.

#web-development #technology #css3 #flexbox #css #html-css #learning-css #learn-flexbox-css