CSS

Articles and resources in the CSS category. A full list of categories is also available.

  1. How I approach CSS: my ABC system

    Article posted 3rd September 2021 in CSS and Development

    CSS is easy to write but can become messy and bloated over time. A solid methodology can make maintenance much more comfortable; here’s how I do it.

  2. Critical CSS: what it is, why it’s useful, and how it works

    Article posted 19th August 2021 in CSS and Development

    With Critical CSS, we can give our visitors the most important styling as early as possible and the rest when it’s ready. Here’s why and how to do it.

  3. Sass mixins for Increased Contrast Mode (and Dark Mode)

    Article posted 22nd June 2021 in CSS and Development

    When I added a high contrast version of my website I used an almost-identical Sass mixin to the one I use for Dark Mode. Here’s how it works.

  4. Using the Increased Contrast Mode CSS media query

    Article posted 21st June 2021 in Accessibility, CSS, Design and Development

    Satisfying the enhanced contrast AAA WCAG rule can be limiting; luckily prefers-contrast: more allows us more freedom with our default themes.

  5. Fixing Safari’s HTML-only Dark Mode bug

    Article posted 3rd June 2021 in Accessibility, CSS and HTML

    A bug with link text colours in Safari’s HTML-only Dark Mode theme means we need a bit of extra code. Here’s how to patch things until it’s fixed.

  6. HTML-only Dark Mode

    Article posted 2nd June 2021 in Accessibility, CSS and HTML

    When our CSS contains Dark Mode rules and the file fails to load, we’re left with plain old HTML. Luckily we can request Dark Mode in our markup!

  7. Front of the frontend

    Article posted 1st June 2021 in CSS, Development and HTML

    Frontend development use to be simple. First it was just HTML, then it was HTML, CSS and some JavaScript; then it exploded.

  8. Accessible responsive tables

    Article posted 28th May 2021 in Accessibility, CSS, Development and HTML

    Tables can be tricky to make work responsively; they can also be tricky to make accessible. Here’s a step by step guide to making your tables both!

  9. Refining focus styles with focus-visible

    Article posted 25th May 2021 in CSS and Development

    :focus-visible triggers only on keyboard focus; not on click. This can make our interfaces cleaner, but should it replace :focus completely?

  10. Cleaner focus outlines with box-decoration-break

    Article posted 8th April 2021 in CSS

    When I changed my site’s form and button focus styles, links felt a bit left out. But discovering box-decoration-break has made things consistent.

  11. Scrollbar marker colours on macOS

    Article posted 25th January 2021 in Accessibility and CSS

    The other day, I realised the scroll markers were invisible on my website in Light Mode. The fix was pretty easy once I knew what was going on.

  12. Scroll-bounce page background colour

    Article posted 24th January 2021 in CSS

    In most browsers, if you scroll and hit the top or bottom of the page, there’s a bounce. Did you know you can change the colour behind your page?

  13. Why I prefer not to use CSS shorthand

    Article posted 23rd December 2020 in CSS

    Instead of using the padding declaration, I use the longhand padding-top, padding-right, and so on. Why? A few of good reasons: let me explain.

  14. Form styling limitations are an accessibility issue

    Article posted 27th November 2020 in Accessibility, CSS and Development

    A summary of the things missing in CSS got me thinking about how lack of some form styling may have seriously damaged accessibility on the web.

  15. Accessibility issues when removing list markers

    Article posted 12th October 2020 in Accessibility, CSS and Development

    If we remove the list markers from an ordered or unordered list, we’re likely to run into some issues with VoiceOver.

  16. Custom unordered list markers, done right

    Article posted 8th October 2020 in CSS and Development

    Did you know you can choose any icon you like for unordered/bulleted lists with a single line of CSS? Any Unicode character; no hacky CSS!

  17. Styling list markers the right way

    Article posted 7th October 2020 in CSS and Development

    Simple list styling like changing the bullets’ colour has always felt like a hack, involving a lot of CSS. But now there’s a proper way to do it!

  18. Styling underlines with CSS

    Article posted 9th September 2020 in CSS, Design and Development

    Never mind border-bottom for making your links a bit more visually engaging, here’s how to do it properly with text-decoration.