Tag: css

CSS history

I first got into web design/development in the late 90s, and only as I type this sentence do I realize how long ago that was. And boy, it was horrendous. I mean, being able to make stuff and put it online where other people could see it was pretty slick, but we did not have very much to work with. I’ve been taking for granted that most folks doing web stuff still remember those days, or at least the decade that followed, but I think that assumption might be a wee bit out of date. Some time ago I encountered a tweet marveling at what we had to do without border-radius. I still remember waiting with bated breath for it to be unprefixed! But then, I suspect I also know a number of folks who only tried web design in the old days, and assume nothing about it has changed since. I’m here to tell all of you to get off my lawn. Here’s a history of CSS and web design, as I remember it.

Layout Land

Jen Simmons, Mozilla Designer and Developer Advocate, is publishing a great youtube channel called “Layout Land”, full of valuable information and guidance in how to use the latest CSS techniques. It provides detailed information in how to use them, but also how to make sure they are accessible and useful for all browsers and users. Great stuff if you’re a web designer or developer.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7TizprGknbDalbHplROtag

CSS is a conspiracy

another mickens episode, on w3c. too bad they’re in pdf:

Cascading Style Sheets are a cryptic language developed by the Freemasons to obscure the visual nature of reality and encourage people to depict things using ASCII art. The relationship between CSS and HTML is the same relationship that links the instructions for building your IKEA bed, and the unassembled, spiteful wooden planks that purportedly contain latent bed structures

Recreating the button

Until some future version of HTML gives us new native controls to use in a browser, at Google, we’ve been playing and experimenting with controls we call “custom buttons” in our apps (among other custom controls). These buttons just launched in Gmail yesterday, and they’ve been in Google Reader for 2 months now. The buttons are designed to look very similar to basic HTML input buttons. But they can handle multiple interactions with one basic design. The buttons we’re using are imageless, and they’re created entirely using HTML and CSS, plus some JavaScript to manage the behavior. They’re also easily skinnable with a few lines of CSS, which was a key factor now that Gmail has themes.

how the new gmail buttons were made