If you operate a website that features lots of code examples, you know how important it is to spend some quality time styling the <pre></pre> element. When left unstyled, wild <pre></pre> tags will mangle your preformatted content and destroy your site’s layout. Different browsers treat the <pre></pre> tag quite differently, varying greatly in their default handling of font-sizing, scrollbar-rendering, and word-wrapping. Indeed, getting your preformatted code to look consistent, usable, and stylish across browsers is no easy task, but it […] Continue reading »
![[ Screenshot: Default Apache 404 Error Page ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2009/pimp-your-404/404-not-found.png)
I have been wanting to write about 404 error pages for quite awhile now. They have always been very important to me, with customized error pages playing a integral part of every well-rounded web-design strategy. Rather than try to re-invent the wheel with this, I think I will just go through and discuss some thoughts about 404 error pages, share some useful code snippets, and highlight some suggested resources along the way. In a sense, this post is nothing more […] Continue reading »
Behold the ubiquitous list elements, <ul></ul> and <ol></ol>! These two sexy elements help millions of websites display lists of information in clean, semantic fashion. Without them, we’d be crawling around like filthy cavemen, eating dirt and howling at the moon. But these list elements aren’t just sexy, they are also extremely flexible, enabling us humble designers to create robust list configurations that are semantically versatile and highly customizable. We all know how to throw down a basic list: Continue reading »
![[ Mobile Screenshots: WordPress.com, About.com, Go.com ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2009/mobile-styles/screenshots-01.jpg)
More people are surfing the Web via mobile device than ever before. It’s just so convenient to have that mobile access to anything you need. Sadly, most websites have not yet considered their mobile visitors, who probably move on to the next site before trying to make sense of a jumbled mess. Those of you who surf the Mobile Web know exactly what I’m talking about here: sites that “get it” are a joy to visit, but those that don’t […] Continue reading »
![[ Electrical Surge ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2009/misc-chunks/html-css-power.jpg)
Web designers can do some pretty cool stuff with HTML 4 and CSS 2.1. We can structure our documents logically and create information-rich sites without relying on archaic, table-based layouts. We can style our web pages with beauty and detail without resorting to inline <font></font> and <br /> tags. Indeed, our current design methods have taken us far beyond the hellish era of browser wars, proprietary protocols, and those hideous flashing, scrolling, and blinking web pages. Thankfully, those days are over. As […] Continue reading »
![[ Firefox ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2009/misc-chunks/firefox-logo.png)
In a perfect world, I don’t use CSS hacks, and certainly don’t recommend them. In the unpredictable, chaos of the real world, however, there are many situations where applying styles to particular browsers is indeed the optimal solution. Most of the time, I am targeting or filtering Internet Explorer (because it is so incredibly awesome), but occasionally I need to tweak something in a modern browser like Firefox, Safari, or Opera. In this article, we’ll look at CSS hacks targeting […] Continue reading »
Yet another fine reason to celebrate the current Quintessential theme design here at Perishable Press is graciously provided by the fine folks at CSS Perk. CSS Perk features a growing collection of awesomely designed websites. It’s always a great source of inspiration and ideas for new design projects. Update: cssperk.com is no longer with us, the site went offline 2013/06/24. Still cool getting featured though. Seeing my current theme design showcased at CSS Perk is very inspiring, and a super-cool […] Continue reading »
Check out this sweet composition of aural styles discovered in the stylesheet for the W3C’s website: /* AURAL STYLES (via W3C) */ @media aural { h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { voice-family: paul, male; stress: 20; richness: 90 } h1 { pitch: x-low; pitch-range: 90 } h2 { pitch: x-low; pitch-range: 80 } h3 { pitch: low; pitch-range: 70 } h4 { pitch: medium; pitch-range: 60 } h5 { pitch: medium; pitch-range: 50 } h6 { pitch: medium; pitch-range: […] Continue reading »
Shortest post ever! You can quickly and easily apply transparency to any supportive element by adding the following CSS code your stylesheet: selector { filter: alpha(opacity=50); /* internet explorer */ -khtml-opacity: 0.5; /* khtml, old safari */ -moz-opacity: 0.5; /* mozilla, netscape */ opacity: 0.5; /* fx, safari, opera */ } Check the code comments to see what’s doing what, and feel free to adjust the level of transparency by editing the various property values. Also, remember to replace “selector” […] Continue reading »
![[ CSS3 ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/css-logo.jpg)
I have written previously on the fine art of preloading images without JavaScript using only CSS. These caching techniques have evolved in terms of effectiveness and accuracy, but may be improved further to allow for greater cross-browser functionality. In this post, I share a “CSS-only” preloading method that works better under a broader set of conditions. Previous image-preloading techniques target all browsers, devices, and media types. Unfortunately, certain browsers do not load images that are hidden directly (via the <img […] Continue reading »
Yay! Perishable Press is now featured at one of my favorite CSS slash design showcase sites, Divine CSS! Divine CSS features a mouth-watering collection of CSS and Flash-based website designs, and is always a great source of ideas for new projects. Seeing my current theme (Quintessential) showcased at Divine CSS is very inspiring, and a nice way to celebrate the (relatively) new design. Thank you to the fine folks at Divine CSS for featuring my design :) Continue reading »
A great way to enhance the visual appearance of various block-level elements is to use a “rounded-corner” effect. For example, throughout the current design for this site, I am using rounded corners on several different types of elements, including image borders, content panels, and even pre-formatted code blocks. Some of these rounded-corner effects are accomplished via multiple <div></div>s and a few background images, while others are created strictly with CSS. Of these two different methods, extra images and markup are […] Continue reading »
![[ Screenshot: Example Photo Styled with swfIR ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/swfir-example.png)
In this ultimate guide to swfIR, you will learn how to use swfIR to replace your ordinary images with richer, stylized graphics. swfIR enables efficient, practical and scalable application of drop-shadows, rounded corners, and even image rotation to any number of specified images throughout your site. From concept and application to examples and recipes, this guide covers everything you need for successful swfIR implementation. The Challenge.. There are many ways to enhance the visual presentation of your images. Popular visual […] Continue reading »
![[ Robin Leach of 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/css-implement/lifestyles.jpg "Somehow, 'happy' just doesn't say it..")
A great way to improve your CSS skills is to check out the stylesheets used by other websites. Digging behind the scenes and exploring some applied CSS provides new ideas and insights about everything from specificity and formatting to hacks and shortcuts. Learning CSS by reading about ideal cases and theoretical applications is certainly important, but actually seeing how the language is applied in “real-world” scenarios provides first-hand knowledge and insight. While there are millions of standards-based, CSS-designed websites to […] Continue reading »
CSS is very powerful. In this tutorial, we look at how to clean up styles on hyperlinks containing images (e.g., JPG, PNG, GIF) using pure CSS techniques. As well as some related tips and tricks to help you get linked images displaying exactly as intended. Continue reading »
While we all watch as Internet Explorer 6 dies a slow, painful death, many unfortunate designers and developers continue to find themselves dealing with IE6’s lack of support for simple things like minimum and maximum widths. Fortunately, there are solutions to this problem, primarily in the form of CSS expressions such as this: /* set the minimum width for IE 6 */ #target_element { width: expression((document.body.clientWidth < 335)? "333px" : "auto"); /* min-width for IE6 */ min-width: 333px; /* min-width […] Continue reading »
