CSS is a beautiful language but it can also be frustrating at times. Certain CSS solutions don’t work on certain browsers (cough Internet Explorer cough) and much of your time can be spent debugging code.

Thankfully there are lots of great CSS snippets available online that fix common problems and design issues. In this article we have listed 30 CSS snippets that we think you will find very useful.

The Code

1. Chris Poteet’s CSS Browser Reset

Resetting your CSS style allows you to stop cross browser differences. Chris Proteet’s reset code doesn’t work in IE6 however this shouldn’t be a concern any more with use of the browser dropping below 1% in the USA.

/*

Reset Default Browser Styles
- Place first in the listing of external style sheets for cascading.
- Be sure to explicitly set margin/padding styles.
- Styles are not reset that have to do with display (block, inline) are not reset.

By: Chris Poteet & various influences

*/

* {
vertical-align: baseline;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: inherit;
font-size: 100%;
border: none;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
body {
padding: 5px;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre, blockquote, form, ul, ol, dl {
margin: 20px 0;
}
li, dd, blockquote {
margin-left: 40px;
}
dt {
font-weight: bold;
}
table {
border-collapse: collapse;
border-spacing: 0;
}

2. Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset

Eric Meyer’s CSS code resets is one of the most popular CSS snippets. It even found it’s way into the Blueprint CSS Framework.

/* http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/
   v2.0 | 20110126
   License: none (public domain)
*/

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td,
article, aside, canvas, details, embed,
figure, figcaption, footer, header, hgroup,
menu, nav, output, ruby, section, summary,
time, mark, audio, video {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	font-size: 100%;
	font: inherit;
	vertical-align: baseline;
}
/* HTML5 display-role reset for older browsers */
article, aside, details, figcaption, figure,
footer, header, hgroup, menu, nav, section {
	display: block;
}
body {
	line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
	list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
	quotes: none;
}
blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
	content: '';
	content: none;
}
table {
	border-collapse: collapse;
	border-spacing: 0;
}

3. How to Create Multiple Borders in CSS3

A cool technique using the box-shadow property that allows you to create multiple borders around an object.

box-shadow:
    0 0 0 2px #000,
    0 0 0 3px #999,
    0 0 0 9px #fa0,
    0 0 0 10px #666,
    0 0 0 16px #fd0,
    0 0 0 18px #000;

4. Tucked Corners

This CSS code will give you the cool ‘tucked corners’ effect that is used on the Gravatar home page.

div.tucked-corners {
	    background: #f6f6f6;
	    height: 380px;
	    margin: 50px auto;
	    padding: 10px;
	    position: relative;
	    width: 580px;
	    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 7px hsla(0,0%,0%,.2);
	       -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 7px hsla(0,0%,0%,.2);
	            box-shadow: 0 1px 7px hsla(0,0%,0%,.2);
	}
	span.tucked-corners {
	    background: #c4453c;
	    display: block;
	    height: 380px;
	    position: relative;
	    width: 580px;
	    -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 10px hsla(0,0%,0%,.25);
	       -moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 10px hsla(0,0%,0%,.25);
	            box-shadow: inset 0 0 10px hsla(0,0%,0%,.25);
	}

	/* Top Corner Effect */

	.top-corners:after,
	.top-corners:before {
	    background: #e6e6e6;
	    content: '';
	    height: 50px;
	    position: absolute;
	    top: -25px;
	    width: 100px;
	    z-index: 10;
	    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 6px 9px -8px hsla(0,0%,0%,.5);
	       -moz-box-shadow: 0 6px 9px -8px hsla(0,0%,0%,.5);
	            box-shadow: 0 6px 9px -8px hsla(0,0%,0%,.5);
	}
	.top-corners:after {
	    left: -50px;
	    -webkit-transform: rotate(-45deg);
	       -moz-transform: rotate(-45deg);
	        -ms-transform: rotate(-45deg);
	         -o-transform: rotate(-45deg);
	            transform: rotate(-45deg);
	}
	.top-corners:before {
	    right: -50px;
	    -webkit-transform: rotate(45deg);
	       -moz-transform: rotate(45deg);
	        -ms-transform: rotate(45deg);
	         -o-transform: rotate(45deg);
	            transform: rotate(45deg);
	}

	/* Bottom Corner Effect */

	.bottom-corners:after,
	.bottom-corners:before {
	    background: #e6e6e6;
	    content: '';
	    height: 50px;
	    position: absolute;
	    bottom: -25px;
	    width: 100px;
	    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 6px 9px -8px hsla(0,0%,0%,.5);
	       -moz-box-shadow: 0 6px 9px -8px hsla(0,0%,0%,.5);
	            box-shadow: 0 6px 9px -8px hsla(0,0%,0%,.5);
	}
	.bottom-corners:after {
	    left: -50px;
	    -webkit-transform: rotate(-135deg);
	       -moz-transform: rotate(-135deg);
	        -ms-transform: rotate(-135deg);
	         -o-transform: rotate(-135deg);
	            transform: rotate(-135deg);
	}
	.bottom-corners:before {
	    right: -50px;
	    -webkit-transform: rotate(135deg);
	       -moz-transform: rotate(135deg);
	        -ms-transform: rotate(135deg);
	         -o-transform: rotate(135deg);
	            transform: rotate(135deg);
	}

5. iPad-Specific CSS

Change the general layout of ipad screens and portrait and landscape modes.

@media only screen and (device-width: 768px) {
  /* For general iPad layouts */
}

@media only screen and (min-device-width: 481px) and (max-device-width: 1024px) and (orientation:portrait) {
  /* For portrait layouts only */
}

@media only screen and (min-device-width: 481px) and (max-device-width: 1024px) and (orientation:landscape) {
  /* For landscape layouts only */
}

6. Style links depending on file format

A short CSS snippet that changes the styling of external links, email links and links to pdf documents.

	/* external links */
a[href^="http://"]{
    padding-right: 20px;
    background: url(external.gif) no-repeat center right;
}

/* emails */

a[href^="mailto:"]{
padding-right: 20px;

background: url(email.png) no-repeat center right;

}

/* pdfs */

a[href$=".pdf"]{
padding-right: 20px;
background: url(pdf.png) no-repeat center right;

7. Drop Caps

A great cross-browser snippet that lets you make the first letter of a paragraph stand out.

.firstcharacter { float: left; color: #903; font-size: 75px; line-height: 60px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 8px; padding-left: 3px; font-family: Georgia; }

This can also be achieved using CSS3 however it doesn’t work on IE9.

p:first-child:first-letter { float: left; color: #903; font-size: 75px; line-height: 60px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 8px; padding-left: 3px; font-family: Georgia; }

8. CSS Sticky Footer

Create a sticky footer for your page. The solution works on all major browsers including Google Chrome and IE8.

CSS

/*
Sticky Footer Solution
by Steve Hatcher 

http://stever.ca

http://www.cssstickyfooter.com

*/

* {margin:0;padding:0;} 

/* must declare 0 margins on everything, also for main layout components use padding, not
vertical margins (top and bottom) to add spacing, else those margins get added to total height
and your footer gets pushed down a bit more, creating vertical scroll bars in the browser */

html, body {height: 100%;}

#wrap {min-height: 100%;}

#main {overflow:auto;
	padding-bottom: 150px;}  /* must be same height as the footer */

#footer {position: relative;
	margin-top: -150px; /* negative value of footer height */
	height: 150px;
	clear:both;} 

/*Opera Fix*/
body:before {/* thanks to Maleika (Kohoutec)*/
content:"";
height:100%;
float:left;
width:0;
margin-top:-32767px;/* thank you Erik J - negate effect of float*/
}

/* IMPORTANT

You also need to include this conditional style in the  of your HTML file to feed this style to IE 6 and lower and 8 and higher.



*/

HTML

<div id="wrap">

	<div id="main">

	</div>

</div>


<div id="footer">

</div>

9. Image Replacement Technique

A handy way of replacing a text page element with an image. The snippet addresses a problem from another solution in which Firefox users noticed a dotted border that goes to the left of the screen.

a.replacement
{
  background: url(dotted-border.png) no-repeat;
  height: 44px;
  width: 316px;
  display: block;
  text-indent: -9999px;
  overflow: hidden;  /*Add this line to the image replacement method*/
}

10. Set body font-size to 62.5% for Easier em Conversion

If you want to have a more flexible layout, you should use em instead of pixels or points. By setting your font size at 62.5% you can easily set your font using em as the value will be a tenth of pixel value.

body {
  font-size: 62.5%; /* font-size 1em = 10px */
}
p {
  font-size: 1.2em; /* 1.2em = 12px */
}

11. Vertically Align Text

If you set the line-height of your paragraph as the same size as it’s parent division you can easily center the text vertically.

div { width:100px; height:100px; }
div p { line-height:100px; }

12. How to Create 3D Text With CSS3

Using the text-shadow property, this snippet will help you create 3D text using CSS only.

p.threeD
{
	text-shadow:
		-1px 1px 0 #ddd,
		-2px 2px 0 #c8c8c8,
		-3px 3px 0 #ccc,
		-4px 4px 0 #b8b8b8,
		-4px 4px 0 #bbb,
		0px 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.4),
		0px 2px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.3),
		-1px 3px 3px rgba(0,0,0,.2),
		-1px 5px 5px rgba(0,0,0,.1),
		-2px 8px 8px rgba(0,0,0,.1),
		-2px 13px 13px rgba(0,0,0,.1)
		;
}

13. Wrapping Long URLs and Text Content with CSS

This snippet will stop long lines of text extending over the content area by making sure the content wraps to fit the content width.

pre {
	white-space: pre;           /* CSS 2.0 */
	white-space: pre-wrap;      /* CSS 2.1 */
	white-space: pre-line;      /* CSS 3.0 */
	white-space: -pre-wrap;     /* Opera 4-6 */
	white-space: -o-pre-wrap;   /* Opera 7 */
	white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; /* Mozilla */
	white-space: -hp-pre-wrap;  /* HP Printers */
	word-wrap: break-word;      /* IE 5+ */
	}

14. Fancy Ampersand

Make your ampersands stand out using this short snippet. Simply change the font-family to suit your preference.

.amp {
font-family: Baskerville, 'Goudy Old Style', Palatino, 'Book Antiqua', serif;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: normal;
}

15. Pull Quotes for Improved Reading

Make your quotes stand out more by floating them to the right or left hand side of your content and wrapping content around it.

.pullquote {
width: 300px;
float: right;
margin: 5px;
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font: italic bold #ff0000 ; }

16. Rounded Borders Around Images

With CSS3 you can easily place rounded borders around your images using this snippet.

img {
-webkit-border-radius: 25px;
-moz-border-radius: 25px;
border-radius: 25px;
}

17. Image Preloader

Load a small gif in the background of an image first so that it is showed before the main image loads.

img
{
    background: url(img/preloader.gif) no-repeat 50% 50%;
}

18. CSS3 Opacity

By using the opacity property, which lets you see through an element, you can create a layered textured background.

div.L1 { background:#036; opacity:0.2; height:20px; }
div.L2 { background:#036; opacity:0.4; height:20px; }
div.L3 { background:#036; opacity:0.6; height:20px; }
div.L4 { background:#036; opacity:0.8; height:20px; }
div.L5 { background:#036; opacity:1.0; height:20px; }

19. Highlight links that open in a new window

This snippet allows you to easily distinguish links that open in new browser/tab windows by styling them different from other links.

a[target="_blank"]:before,
a[target="new"]:before {
margin:0 5px 0 0;
padding:1px;
outline:1px solid #333;
color:#333;
background:#ff9;
font:12px "Zapf Dingbats";
content: "\279C";
 }

20. The New Bulletproof @Font-Face Syntax

A cross-browser CSS snippet that lets you define your font faces.

@font-face {
	font-family: 'MyFontFamily';
	src: url('myfont-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
	     url('myfont-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
	     url('myfont-webfont.ttf')  format('truetype'),
	     url('myfont-webfont.svg#svgFontName') format('svg');
	}

21. Flip an Image

A CSS snippet that lets you flip an image. This is particularly useful if you want to flip icons such as arrows.

img {
        -moz-transform: scaleX(-1);
        -o-transform: scaleX(-1);
        -webkit-transform: scaleX(-1);
        transform: scaleX(-1);
        filter: FlipH;
        -ms-filter: "FlipH";
}

22. Email Link With An Image

A quick way of automatically adding a mail image to all of your email links.

a[href^="mailto:"] {
     background: url(images/email.png) no-repeat right top;
     padding-right:10px;
}

23. Beautiful Blockquotes

A neat way of styling your blockquotes to add a bit more punch to them.

blockquote {
     background:#f9f9f9;
     border-left:10px solid #ccc;
     margin:1.5em 10px;
     padding:.5em 10px;
     quotes:"\201C""\201D""\2018""\2019";
}
blockquote:before {
     color:#ccc;
     content:open-quote;
     font-size:4em;
     line-height:.1em;
     margin-right:.25em;
     vertical-align:-.4em;
}
blockquote p {
     display:inline;
}

24. Browser CSS hacks

A large list of browser hacks to make sure your website looks consistent across all browsers.

/***** Selector Hacks ******/

/* IE6 and below */
* html #uno  { color: red }

/* IE7 */
*:first-child+html #dos { color: red } 

/* IE7, FF, Saf, Opera  */
html>body #tres { color: red }

/* IE8, FF, Saf, Opera (Everything but IE 6,7) */
html>/**/body #cuatro { color: red }

/* Opera 9.27 and below, safari 2 */
html:first-child #cinco { color: red }

/* Safari 2-3 */
html[xmlns*=""] body:last-child #seis { color: red }

/* safari 3+, chrome 1+, opera9+, ff 3.5+ */
body:nth-of-type(1) #siete { color: red }

/* safari 3+, chrome 1+, opera9+, ff 3.5+ */
body:first-of-type #ocho {  color: red }

/* saf3+, chrome1+ */
@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {
 #diez  { color: red  }
}

/* iPhone / mobile webkit */
@media screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
 #veintiseis { color: red  }
}

/* Safari 2 - 3.1 */
html[xmlns*=""]:root #trece  { color: red  }

/* Safari 2 - 3.1, Opera 9.25 */
*|html[xmlns*=""] #catorce { color: red  }

/* Everything but IE6-8 */
:root *> #quince { color: red  }

/* IE7 */
*+html #dieciocho {  color: red }

/* Firefox only. 1+ */
#veinticuatro,  x:-moz-any-link  { color: red }

/* Firefox 3.0+ */
#veinticinco,  x:-moz-any-link, x:default  { color: red  }

/* FF 3.5+ */
body:not(:-moz-handler-blocked) #cuarenta { color: red; }

/***** Attribute Hacks ******/

/* IE6 */
#once { _color: blue }

/* IE6, IE7 */
#doce { *color: blue; /* or #color: blue */ }

/* Everything but IE6 */
#diecisiete { color/**/: blue }

/* IE6, IE7, IE8 */
#diecinueve { color: blue\9; }

/* IE7, IE8 */
#veinte { color/*\**/: blue\9; }

/* IE6, IE7 -- acts as an !important */
#veintesiete { color: blue !ie; } /* string after ! can be anything */

/* IE8, IE9 */
#anotherone  {color: blue\0/;} /* must go at the END of all rules */

25. How To Change The Default Text Selection Color on your Blog

Change the color of highlighted text by adding this little CSS snippet to your stylesheet.

::selection {
   background: #ffb7b7; /* Safari */
        color: #ffffff;
   }
::-moz-selection {
   background: #ffb7b7; /* Firefox */
        color: #ffffff;
   }

26. Clearfix

Clear floated elements easily by creating a CSS clear class.

.clearfix:after {
	visibility: hidden;
	display: block;
	font-size: 0;
	content: " ";
	clear: both;
	height: 0;
}

.clearfix { display: inline-block; }

/* start commented backslash hack \*/
* html .clearfix { height: 1%; }
.clearfix { display: block; }
/* close commented backslash hack */

27. Hide Logo Text With Text Indent

Make your logo is SEO friendly by using this snippet for your h1 tag. The snippet ensures that the logo text is not displayed on the page.

h1 {
        text-indent:-9999px;
        margin:0 auto;
        width:400px;
        height:100px;
        background:transparent url("images/logo.jpg") no-repeat scroll;
}

28. Reset all Text Colors and Background Colors

Reset all text and background colours. The snippet sets everything back to black text on a white background though you can change these colours accordingly.

* {
     color: black !important;
     background-color: white !important;
     background-image: none !important;
}

29. Multiple Background Images

Use multiple background images with this useful CSS3 snippet.

#multiple-images {
   background: url(image_1.png) top left no-repeat,
   url(image_2.png) bottom left no-repeat,
   url(image_3.png) bottom right no-repeat;
}

30. Linear Gradient

This CSS code will allow you to create a linear gradient in the background of an element. This works on all major browsers however some older browsers don’t display it properly (particularly older versions of IE).

background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #F0ECE8 0%, #D8D3C8 100%);
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient( top, #F0ECE8 0%, #D8D3C8 100%);
background-image: -o-linear-gradient( top, #F0ECE8 0%, #D8D3C8 100%);
background-image: linear-gradient( top, #F0ECE8 0%, #D8D3C8 100%);
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0, #F0ECE8), color-stop(1, #D8D3C8) );
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr=’#F0ECE8?, endColorstr=’#D8D3C8?,GradientType=0 );

We hope that you enjoyed the post and found it as useful as we’d hoped. If you know of any other useful CSS snippets that you keep handy that we neglected, please share them with us in the comment area.

(rb)

  

Navigation is such an important part of your website. It’s how your visitors navigate to the main areas of your site and makes it easy for them to find your good content.

CSS is of course the perfect language for designing beautiful navigation menus. It can be applied to any type of website and is very flexible. Don’t be alarmed if your own CSS skills are fairly limited as there are a lot of great tutorials out there that walk you through how to add clean and professional looking CSS menus to your website. You can either copy and paste the code into your own design or modify the menu to suit your needs.

Today we would like to show you 100 of these tutorials; 75 horizontal CSS menu tutorials and 25 vertical CSS menu tutorials.

Horizontal CSS Menu Tutorials

1. Advanced CSS Menu Trick

View Tutorial | Demo

2. Elegant Drop Menu with CSS Only

View Tutorial | Demo

3. Bulletproof CSS Sliding Doors

View Tutorial & Demo

4. Tabbed Navigation Using CSS

View Tutorial | Demo

5. Create an Advanced CSS3 Menu – Version 2

View Tutorial | Demo

6. Create a Slick Menu using CSS3

View Tutorial | Demo

7. How to Make a Smooth Animated Menu with jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

8. How to Make a CSS Sprite Powered Menu

View Tutorial

9. Simple jQuery Dropdowns

View Tutorial | Demo

10. Designing the Digg Header: How To & Download

View Tutorial | Demo

11. Dynamic Page / Replacing Content

View Tutorial | Demo

12. Create a Fun Animated Navigation Menu With Pure CSS

View Tutorial | Demo

13. How-to: DropDown CSS Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

14. Flexible CSS Menu

View Tutorial & Demo

15. Creating a glassy non div navigation bar

View Tutorial | Demo

16. CSS Sliding Door using only 1 image

View Tutorial | Demo

17. CSS UL LI – Horizontal CSS Menu

View Tutorial

18. How to Build a Kick-Butt CSS3 Mega Drop-Down Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

19. A Different Top Navigation

View Tutorial | Demo

20. Create a Cool Animated Navigation with CSS and jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

21. Navigation Bar

View Tutorial & Demo

22. CSS: drop down menu tutorial

View Tutorial | Demo

23. RocketBar – A jQuery And CSS3 Persistent Navigation Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

24. A Great CSS Horizontal Drop-Down Menu

View Tutorial & Demo

25. Overlay Effect Menu with jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

26. Grungy Random Rotation Menu with jQuery and CSS3

View Tutorial | Demo

27. Rocking and Rolling Rounded Menu with jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

28. Slide Down Box Menu with jQuery and CSS3

View Tutorial | Demo

29. Advanced CSS Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

30. CSS3 Dropdown Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

31. How To Create A Simple Drop Down Menu With CSS3

View Tutorial | Demo

32. Pastel color menu with dynamic submenu using CSS

View Tutorial | Demo

33. Creating an Animated CSS3 Horizontal Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

34. Tutorial to create a Beautiful, simple, horizontal CSS menu

View Tutorial & Demo

35. CSS Sprites2 – It’s JavaScript Time

View Tutorial | Demo

36. Image Menu with Jquery

View Tutorial | Demo

37. How to Code an Overlapping Tabbed Main Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

38. Pure CSS Horizontal Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

39. Pure CSS Menu With Infinite Sub Menus Tutorial

View Tutorial | Demo

40. Animated horizontal tabs

View Tutorial & Demo

41. CSS Sprite Navigation Tutorial

View Tutorial | Demo

42. Create your own drop down menu with nested submenus using CSS and a little JavaScript

View Tutorial | Demo

43. CSS Drop Down Menu Tutorial

View Tutorial & Demo

44. Nicer Navigation with CSS Transitions

View Tutorial | Demo

45. CSS Navigation Menus

View Tutorial

46. Pure CSS Fish Eye Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

47. How to Create a CSS3 Tabbed Navigation

View Tutorial | Demo

48. Create an apple style menu and improve it via jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

49. Create a multilevel Dropdown menu with CSS and improve it via jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

50. Sweet tabbed navigation using CSS3

View Tutorial | Demo

51. Create an Advanced CSS Menu Using the Hover and Position Properties

View Tutorial | Demo

52. Sexy Drop Down Menu w/ jQuery & CSS

View Tutorial | Demo

53. How to Create a Horizontal Dropdown Menu with HTML, CSS and jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

54. CSS Express Drop-Down Menus

View Tutorial | Demo

55. Professional Dark CSS Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

56. Creating a Simple yet Stylish CSS Jquery Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

57. jQuery Drop Line Tabs

View Tutorial & Demo

58. Animated Menus Using jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

59. Make a Mega Drop-Down Menu with jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

60. Animated Navigation with CSS & jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

61. Horizontal Subnav with CSS

View Tutorial | Demo

62. Mega Drop Down Menus w/ CSS & jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

63. CSS dropdown menu without javascripting or hacks

View Tutorial & Demo

64. CSS Drop Down Navigation Tutorial

View Tutorial

65. Sleek Pointer Menu 2

View Tutorial & Demo

66. CSS Overlapping Tabs Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

67. Horizontal CSS Menu With Icons

View Tutorial | Demo

68. Creating a Multi-Level Dropdown Menu using CSS and jQuery

View Tutorial | Demo

69. Create The Fanciest Dropdown Menu You Ever Saw

View Tutorial | Demo

70. Create A Speaking Block Navigation Menu Using Pure CSS

View Tutorial | Demo

71. Horizontal CSS List Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

72. CSS3 dropdown menu

View Tutorial | Demo

73. Making a CSS3 Animated Menu

View Tutorial | Demo

74. How To Create A Clean CSS3 Navigation Bar

View Tutorial | Demo

75. How to Create a Modern Ribbon Banner Navigation Bar with Pure HTML/CSS3

View Tutorial | Demo

Vertical CSS Menu Tutorials

76. CSS Pop-Out Menu Tutorial

Tutorial | Demo

77. CSS graphic menu with rollovers

Tutorial | Demo

78. Vertical CSS Menu With a ‘Behavior’ File

Tutorial | Demo

79. Super Fantastic CSS Navigation Image Rollovers

Tutorial | Demo

80. Vertical Menu with Hover Effect using CSS

Tutorial | Demo

81. How To Create A ‘Mootools Homepage’ Inspired Navigation Effect Using jQuery

Tutorial | Demo

82. Simple CSS Vertical Menus

View Tutorial | Demo

83. Create a Social Media Sharing Menu Using CSS and jQuery

Tutorial | Demo

84. CSS3 Minimalistic Navigation Menu

Tutorial | Demo

85. Beautiful Slide Out Navigation: A CSS and jQuery Tutorial

Tutorial | Demo

86. Awesome Cufonized Fly-out Menu with jQuery and CSS3

Tutorial | Demo

87. Two CSS vertical menu with show/hide effects

Tutorial | Demo

88. Animated Drop Down Menu with jQuery

Tutorial | Demo

89. Clean and Attractive jQuery Vertical Menu Tutorial

Tutorial | Demo

90. Nested Side Bar Menu

Tutorial & Demo

91. CSS menus

Tutorial | Demo

92. Simple Vertical CSS Menu

Tutorial

93. Sliding Jquery Menu

Tutorial | Demo

94. Reinventing a Drop Down with CSS and jQuery

Tutorial | Demo

95. Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style

Tutorial | Demo

96. CSS Vertical Navigation with Teaser

Tutorial | Demo

97. jQuery style menu with CSS3

Tutorial | Demo

98. Green Vertical Navigation Menu

Tutorial | Demo

99. CSS: Sexy Vertical Popup Menu with CSS

Tutorial | Demo

100. Uberlink CSS List Menus

Tutorial | Demo

Overview

We hope you have enjoyed this list of CSS navigation menus and found something useful for your site (We made a point of including a mix of different menu styles: basic menus, flashy menus, menus which use jquery, menus that use pure CSS etc). If you know of any other great CSS menu tutorials, please feel free to share them in the comment area. :)

  

CSS tools are essential for web developers because they act like a sort of magic lamp that can simplify the job at hand. Most development tools are time savers that are there to help developers create stylish, functional and optimized websites with a few shortcuts.

CSS tools and generators are available in such large numbers that a developer can choose from a range of them to make their projects go smoother. Here is the collection of around 50 useful and handy CSS tools and generators that every developer should know about. Enjoy!

CSS Colors Tools

Color Scheme Designer
This tool provides colors in the form of a color wheel that offers mono, complement, traid, tetrad, analogic and accented analogic color variations in the percentage ratio; and it also highlights the same with the suitable scheme chosen.

Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator
It is a CSS gradient editor and generator that lets you create CSS gradients having cross-browser support.

CSS Color Codes
This tool offers two options for furnishing the hexadecimal and RGB color codes. You can pick the color from the color picker and then copy its hexadecimal value from the bottom field.

Colors Pallete Generator
This is a powerful tool that generates a color palette derived from the primary colors of the image that you upload. It is a useful tool for rapidly grabbing a particular color within an image for inspiration. With this, you can also generate Photoshop swatches and CSS styles.

CSS Colors
This color chart offers more than 16 million colors with both RGB and hexadecimal color modes.

Gradient Image Maker
This tool allows you to easily generate a gradient image of 3 types with on the spot previewing. With this tool you can create gradient images that you can use everywhere in your web page design.

CSS Layouts Tools

templatr
It is a template generator that lets you create beautiful templates for your blog and web design without requiring any HTML and CSS knowledge.

Free CSS Template Code Generator
It is a free HTML – CSS template generator that generates a three column layout without using any Tables. This template generator produces a custom-made template that can be used to control the look and feel of an entire website.

Firdamatic: the Design Tool for the Uninspired Webloggers
This tableless layout generator lets you easily create and customize layouts by simply completing a form.

CSS Layout Generator – CSS Portal
Another layout generator with which you can create a fluid or fixed width column layout, with up to 3 columns, header, footer and menu.

CSS Layout Generator
Another CSS Layout Generator that allows you to create your own template by using HTML and CSS. You can create a template with up to 3 columns and a header and footer.

Layout Generator
This tool generates multi-column and grid layouts with CSS 2.0 techniques by using pixels, percentage or em.

CSS Layout Generator
With this tool, you can modify the header, footer, sidebars and layout width and can set the document type as XHTML or HTML strict or transitional to see the preview in the same page.

YAML Builder
This tool is designed for visual development of YAML based CSS layouts.

CSS Grids Tools

The 1KB CSS Grid
It is a lightweight tool with which you can streamline page templates for content management systems.

Variable Grid System
It is a quick way to generate an underlying CSS grid that is based on the 960 Grid System.

GRIDINATOR
This tool allows you to generate grids for the 960.gs, Golden Grid, or 1KB Grid. You can even generate a basic generic grid.

Blueprint Grid CSS Generator
With this tool, you can generate more flexible versions of Blueprint’s grid.cs and compressed.css and grid.png files.

CSS Grid Calculator
This calculator allows you to envision page layouts and draw grids in a variety of ways. You can have an accurate visual feedback on how text blocks and page divisions will appear within a browser window. You can also return style declarations for divisions and text to copy and paste into style sheets.

Grid Designer
This tool allows you create design grids by giving you options to customize Columns, Pixels, Gutters and Margins.

Em Calculator
Em Calculator is a JavaScript tool that lets you design scalable and accessible CSS design. This tool converts pixels to their relative em units based on a text size.

CSS Menus and Buttons

CSS Menu Maker
This tool allows you create custom, cross browser compatible website menus.

CSS Menu Generator
This menu generator lets you generate CSS and HTML codes which you need to create an appealing set of text based navigation buttons.

My CSS Menu
This tool provides an easy way to create cross browser compatible CSS menus. With this tool, you can create Horizontal, Vertical, Drop-down web navigation.

Tabs Generator
Another CSS navigation Tab Menu generator that allows you tweak size, colors, corners and more to generate unique designs that can be downloaded for your use.

List-O-Matic
With this tool, you can choose the content, layout and presentation of your list-based navigation menus.

Button Maker Online
This tool creates XHTML valid micro buttons (80×15). You can also create larger 88×31 buttons.

CSS Button & Text Field Generator
This tool is a CSS button and text field generator that lets you easily create with just a click of the mouse.

Fonts and Text CSS Tools

Fonttester
This is an amazing tool that lets you edit loads of CSS properties including inline height, font weight, font style and variant, text indent and transform, and word and letter spacing.

CSS font style
You can use this tool to set the style of the font to italic or oblique.

Typetester
This application provides a comparison of the fonts for the screen. Since the new fonts are packed into operating systems, the list of the common fonts will be updated.

CSS Font and Text Style Wizard
You can use this wizard if you want to experiment with the fonts and text styles in order to generate sample CSS style source code. Dynamic HTML is used in this wizard that changes the style of the table in-situ, without loading another page.

CSS Type Set
This is a typography tool that allows designers and developers to test and learn the ways to style their web content.

CSS Generator & Optimizer

CSS Generator
This tool lets you choose a style for your web page. You can select different Cascading Style Sheet properties with live preview. You can choose color, HTML tag, click the field you would like to insert color into and color them.

CSS Generator
This tool gives you a live preview of the color that you select from the palette. You can directly specify colors and other design attributes. This tool helps you select a face color for your new web project straight away!

Cascading Style Sheet CSS Generator
This is a free tool that lets you create cascading style sheets for your web page. You can add as many style sheets as you want.

quickCSS – Online-CSS-Generator
With this tool, you can generate CSS with just one click.

Spiffy Corners – Purely CSS Rounded Corners
It is a simple tool to generate the CSS and HTML required to generate anti-aliased corners without using images or javascript.

Clean CSS
This is a CSS optimizer and formatter that takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.

Simple CSS
This tool lets you create unique Cascading Style Sheets from scratch. You can also modify your existing CSS.

Regex Patterns for Single Line CSS
While formatting your CSS Style sheet single-line, you may find Dan Rubin’s Textmate macro useful if you group your ruler and add white spaces that makes scanning through the web page easier. You can also use a regular expression if you don’t want to use Textmate.

CSS Sprite Tools

CSS – Sprit.es
With this tool, you can easily generate CSS and HTML code by uploading the file you want to use in your CSS sprite and then click the button that join all your images into a single file. With this tool, you can also achieve any rollover effects.

Spritegen CSS Sprites
This tool allows you create your sprite by letting your upload your image and then add more images. You can also set the output of your images as in PNG, JPEG or GIF.

CSS Sprites
With this tool, upload any number of images and click Generate button to create your CSS sprites with ease.

Website Performance (CSS Sprite Generator)
It is a tool that allows you to upload your source file in order to create the sprite image and CSS. This tool works by ignoring duplicates, resizing the source images, setting the sprite and other CSS options like horizontal and vertical offset, background color, class prefix, CSS suffix etc.

Spritebox
It is a WYSIWYG tool that is helpful for the web designers who want to quickly create CSS classes and IDs from a single sprite image. This tool works on the principle of using the background-position property to line up areas of a sprite image into block elements of a web page.

Other CSS Tools

SlickMap CSS
This tool displays your site maps directly from HTML unordered list navigation. This is appropriate for the websites that want to accommodate up to three levels of page navigation and extra utility links that can be easily modified to meet personal requirements, branding, or style preferences.

CSS3 Please!
This tool displays the output of your code instantaneously. It is a simple yet powerful tool for the web designers and developers.

CSS Sorter
CSS Sorter is a tool that sorts CSS files and rules alphabetically so that you can easily manage your CSS files.

Sky CSS Tool
Sky CSS lets you create CSS classes without requiring any manuscript code. In order to work properly, it needs a JavaScript compatible browser.

CSS Table Wizard
This wizard helps you generate style source code and allows you to do experiments with table border styles.

Csstxt
Csstxt is a powerful tool that illustrates numerous ways to add a style to a text with ‘a’, ‘p’ or div tag.

MinifyMe
It is a small AIR application that packs together multiple CSS and JavaScript files into one and runs on your desktop.

Password Generator
This tool generates all the compulsory codes required to password protect a directory, or selects files within it on your site by means of .htaccess. This tool works by encrypting your desired password and then put the outputs inside your .htaccess and .htpasswd files.

XHTML/CSS Markup Generator
This is a simple tool that lets you quickly generate XHTML Markup and a CSS frame; shorten syntax so that you can directly jump to the elements styling. This tool significantly speeds up your work.

Consider our previous posts:

• 50 Free CSS/(X)HTML Templates
• 15 CSS Habits to Develop for Frustration-Free Coding
• 50+ Fresh CSS Techniques, Tutorials and Resources

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Design templates help build an identity for any particular website. Since the techniques are changing very rapidly within the industry, one must be updated all the time. Many designers download the pre-built CSS templates to explore more. At many stages, designers seek help in the form of inspiration that would help them get back to their creativity track. Or they just want to learn a thing or two about the structure of web-sites and build their own projects on top of “bulletproof” templates.

To keep you moving throughout your creative adventure, we have gathered some cool and absolutely Free CSS and XHTML Web Layouts. You can download and use them for your own personal and/or commercial use. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the templates; the licenses can change from time to time. Feel free to express yourself in a new style and… do not forget to share your opinion with us in the comment section below!

Free and Useful CSS/(X)HTML Templates

HTML5 and CSS3 ( Demo | Download )

JeansWebsite ( Demo | Download )

Lawyer & Attorney ( Demo | Download )

Ornare ( Demo | Download )

iPhone App ( Download )

StudioClick ( Demo | Download )

Darkness ( Demo | Download )

MYportfolio ( Demo | Download )

2 Breed ( Demo | Download )

WesternShop ( Demo | Download )

CSS Heaven 1 ( Demo | Download )

Zen Design ( Demo | Download )

Shop Around ( Demo | Download )

Ikonik ( Demo | Download )

Internet Music ( Demo | Download )

Nova Studio ( Demo | Download )

YIW Minimal ( Demo | Download )

YIW Folio ( Demo | Download )

CleanBusiness ( Demo | Download )

Pure Elegance ( Demo | Download )

Film Blog ( Demo | Download )

Solitude ( Demo | Download )

Speed Racing ( Demo | Download )

PinkShop ( Demo | Download )

Web Design ( Demo | Download )

Online Edu ( Demo | Download )

GrayCompany ( Demo | Download )

EleganceBusiness ( Demo | Download )

Coffee Maker ( Demo | Download )

BusinessTemplate ( Demo | Download )

PC Desktop ( Demo | Download )

RealOne ( Demo | Download )

BAMBOO ( Demo | Download )

Book Store ( Demo | Download )

Symisun ( Demo | Download )

Package ( Demo | Download )

Prestigious ( Demo | Download )

CleanInterface ( Demo | Download )

Grunge Template ( Demo | Download )

Summer of Love ( Demo | Download )

Business Template ( Demo | Download )

One Page Portfolio with HTML5 and CSS3 ( Demo | Download )

Portfolio ( Demo | Download )

Portfolio ( Demo | Download )

CSS Heaven 2 ( Demo | Download )

Silverblog ( Demo | Download )

Alexx C ( Demo | Download )

Photo Pro css template ( Demo | Download )

Treasure hunters ( Demo | Download )

Simple Solution ( Demo | Download )

beSmart ( Demo | Download )

  

By Jeremy Davis

It’s been said that the key to a civilization’s success is mastery of the food system. Unless a group of people can effectively control the basic needs for survival, they will never achieve greatness. Likewise, before CSS skills can be expanded to an advanced level, the basics must become instinct to any CSS coder. Develop these habits and you lay a solid foundation to apply advanced CSS techniques.

1. Use a Reset Stylesheet

This habit (along with a few others) is one frequently mentioned as a CSS best practice. The goal of a reset stylesheet is to reduce inconsistencies among browsers by explicitly setting styles to most of the HTML elements. This ensures that things like font sizes and line heights all render the same on different browsers. Also, the reset clears the default paddings/margins that some browsers have.

Not only does having a reset stylesheet account for browser inconsistencies, it’s good to use them to give each site a known foundation when coding. Keeping the foundation the same for all sites will speed along the development.

The reset from Eric Meyer and the Yahoo reset are the most comment resets used. Futher customizing one of those resets might be needed to accomodate for specific website needs.

2. Use CSS Shorthand

Using shorthand CSS declarations will lead to quicker coding and debugging. It might also save some errors from mistyping multiple declarations.

When a rule has multiple similiar declarations for a single selector, such as

border-top: 5px;
border-right: 10px;
border-bottom: 15px;
border-left: 20px;

they can be combined into one line, such as

border: 5px 10px 15px 20px;

The trick to remember which position controls which direction is TRouBLe: Top, Right, Bottom, Left.

The main declarations that use shorthand for are border, margin, padding and background.

Bonus: Hex Shortcut

Six hexidecimal digits used for CSS colors can be condensed down to three if they are grouped in identical pairs.

For example, #FFFFFF can be written #FFF, or #990055 can be written #905, but #F091A4 cannot be shortened since the pairs aren’t identical.

3. Document Your CSS … As You Go

Going back and commenting code is one of those quixotic things that most fool themselves into thinking they will do. Get in the habit of making good commenting practices while writing styles.

To add a comment in CSS it’s as simple as putting /* Your Comment Here */

Things to comment

Stylesheet Header
This comment briefly states what the stylesheet is for, who wrote it and when. A table of contents might also be needed for larger stylesheets.

Code sections
Put a comment header above large portions of code for things like global styles, headers, sidebars, main content and footer to help delineate them.

For example,

/****************************************/
/*             Sidebar                  */
/****************************************/

Problem declarations
Put comments next to declarations that have know issues in certain browsers, such as

input[type=textbox] /* IE6 Problem */ 

Dependent declarations
Put comments next to things that are dependant on other areas. So if there is a fixed height on a declaration that might need to be adjusted if the content changes, put a small comment next to it, stating what conditions must happen before it will need to adjust.

4. Add a Color Legend

When working on smaller CSS files, keeping track of color hex values isn’t too hard. But as stylesheets start getting 2000+ lines it becomes significantly harder to keep track of which value is for which color. Adding a color legend helps ensure that the wrong colors don’t get used.

The best place for the legend is up in the stylesheet header, underneath all of the other documention.

For example,

/*
/* light blue: #4595be
/* dark blue: #367595
/* special link red: #9F1212
********************************/

5. Remember Where Absolutely Positioned Elements are Relative To

Positioning elements absolutely is something that tends to frighten some CSS beginners, but there is one principle to remember with this declaration that solves most of the trouble.

When a selector has a postition: absolute declaration the webpage is treated like a xy grid. By default, the 0,0 position of the grid is at the very top and left position on the webpage. So by moving the absolutely positioned element to the left 10 pixels and from the top 20 pixels, it’s starting from the top left of the webpage, regardless of where the element sits in the HTML.

That is not usually the desired functionality. What usually is desired is to have the element positioned relative to the selector’s parent or another containing element. To do that simply add position: relative to the desired relative container element. Doing that remaps the 0,0 position on the xy grid from the top of the webpage to the top left of the containing element.

The example below demonstrates how the red box gets positioned differenlty depending on whether the blue container has position: relative or not.

Remembering position: relative should ease most frustrations caused by basic absolute positioning.

6. Avoid Using CSS Hacks

Unfortunately for web designers, there are bugs in some browsers, mainly IE6 and IE7, that cause some styles not to display as they are supposed to in accordance with CSS specifications. In order to combate these inconsistencies, some people write erroneous declarations, hacks, that take advantage of these browser flaws in order to do things, such as hide styles from particular browsers

There are many fancifully named hacks for all the equally fancifully named CSS bugs, but using them can cause problems. Not only do hacks clutter the stylesheet with oddball declarations, it also keeps the stylesheet from validating.

Also, hacks tend to introduce more problems overtime as new browsers are released.

Instead, use conditional stylesheets to target specific browsers.

7. Use Margins When Styling Layouts

Although this habit isn’t one often mentioned, it’s one that helps maintain a consistent layout among different browsers without having to add more declarations to get them all in sync.

The main idea is that instead of adding padding to a container element, add margin to the container’s children to get the same result.

So, instead of

#main-content { padding-left: 10px }

add

#main-content { }
#main-content #left-column { margin-left: 10px }

Although there is nothing particularly wrong with using padding, in my years of building websites I have had consistenly fewer cross-browser problems when I stick with styling layouts with margin.

8. Contain Floats

When floating an element, add overflow: hidden to its containing element.

A common example is,

ul {
	overflow: hidden;
}

ul li {
	float: left;
}

If the container didn’t have overflow:hidden issues arise when setting margins or borders to it. This also clears the float so that elements below it can flow properly in the HTML structure.

Some suggest doing the clear in HTML by adding

<div style="clear:both"></div>

below the floated element, but doing that defeats the purpose of separating a webpage’s style and structure.

It’s also more time consuming than adding overflow: hidden.

9. Add display: inline To Floated Elements

This habit is one that fixes a IE6 problem called the double-margin bug without having to use a CSS hack. On floated elements, IE6 doubles the margin of the element. So a margin of 10px becomes 20px.

It’s easy to imagine the havoc an error like this can cause to a layout. Some of the floated items either become hidden or they push everything below it down.

Even though IE6 is on its way out and a majority of designers aren’t taking the time to get sites looking perfect in IE6, this is a quick habit to learn to make a site better viewed for those poor people still on IE6.

Just get in the habit of adding

display: inline /* IE6 Problem */

every time something is floated.

10. Get Comfortable with Sprites

Sprites mask the viewable space of a larger image, then when an event occurs, typically a :hover event, the viewable space of the image changes to show another portion of the image.

Not only are sprites more efficient by requiring fewer HTTP calls for images, but they add more polish to website designs. Most often sprites are used to create stylish navigation menus.

Using sprites in a design might take a bit of trial and error to get the hang of it, but it’s such a valuable skill to have that it’s worth the effort required to get the concept down

Further Reading

• The Mystery of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools and Tutorials

11. Have a Consistent File Structure

Take the time to create and organize all of the typical files used for a typcial website development project. Create one master template file structure and copy/paste it every time a website needs to be built.

My organization is as follows:

The ‘Website Name’ folder gets renamed to the website name that I’m about to begin work on. That folder contains all of my HTML files for the site, along with the ‘assets’ and ‘styles’ folders.

The ‘assets’ folder typically holds larger document files like PDFs that might need to be downloaded from the site. I also keep editible versions of images I’m using, such as PSDs or Fireworks PNGs, in case I need to modify something.

The ‘styles’ folder is broken into the three subfolders: css, images, javascript.

• css – holds all the css files, such as reset.css, layout.css and main.css
• images – holds all the images for the site
• javascript – holds javascript libraries, plugins and main.js

I use this file structure for most of my webpages and because I’m consistent I know exactly what paths to use when needing to do things, such as put a background image in my CSS.

Some might disagree with my structure, such as having javascript under ‘styles’, but the main point is find a file organization that works for you and get in the habit of consistently using it to make coding faster and more accurate.

12. Indent Your Styles

Adding indentation to a stylesheet can keep complicated stylesheets looking clean and make finding areas of code easier. Add indents to show a parent/child hierarchy.

13. Use Pixels for Font Sizes, Not Ems

This habit is usually a hot button topic with most people having a strong opinion for either fixed font sizes or relative ones.

In hopes to curtail a probably backlack, let me plainly state, “Using a fixed font size, like pixels, leads to fewer CSS frustrations than using a relative font size, such as ems or %.”

In his article Coding Like It’s 1999, Cameron Moll petitions for pixels and says,

The burden of calculating relative units throughout a CSS document is replaced by the convenience of absolute units

Relative font sizes were a good idea a few years ago so that people with different browser font sizes could have a site’s content adjust to their browser’s font size. But now most browsers can zoom and adjust more intelligently so a relative measurement isn’t neeed for that purpose anymore.

Relative measurement becomes a problem because the font sizes inherit the parent’s measurement as it cascades down.

For example, body { font-size: 62.5% } makes a font-size: 1em declaration equal to 10px.

If #blog-content needs to be 14px, the rule is

#blog-content { font-size: 1.4em; }

Now the if the H3 tag inside of #blog-content needs to be 20 pixels, one might assume

#blog-content { font-size: 1.4em; }
#blog-content h3 { font-size: 2.0em }

would be right, but that’s where the relativity problem occurs. Because that 2.0em is now relative to the 1.4em specified on #blog-content, so it is actually font size of 28px.

Keeping up with relative font sizing can get confusing. Stick to using a fixed unit of measure for font sizes to prevent undue troubles.

14. Limit Pseudo Classes to Anchor Tags

Most modern browsers don’t struggle with this problem, but it is an important one to remember if a website still needs to be viewable on older browsers, such as IE6.

The problem is that older browsers only recognize pseduo classes, like :hover, on the anchor tag element, a.

So something like

#header ul li:hover { background-color: #900 }

won’t work in IE6.

This issue could cause real functionality problems, if things like dropdown menus are to appear based on the li:hover event. People viewing the site on IE6 would never see the dropdown and thus, might have a hard time navigating the site.

A solution is to use jQuery for those types of effects.

15. Avoid Selector Issues

Be sure selectors have enough weight to prevent unwanted cascades.

The way the browser determines what style is to be applied to an element with multiple declarations is determined by its specificity

The more specified a CSS selector is the more weight that rule carries. The rule with the heaviest weight is the one that gets applied to the element

If some rules are being applied as desired, check to see if the problem is with its specificity. It might be as simple of a solution as adding an #id-name to the beginning of the selector.

Use element selectors when possible.

Instead of

main-content .main-header

use

#main-content h1

Be careful when grouping selectors.

Grouping selectors can be a time-saving method when dealing with non-relative declarations, like

.main-content div, .main-content p {
	color: #000;
}

But it can cause trouble when using a relative declaration, such as

.main-content div, .main-content p {
	line-height: 1.3em;
}

Because now all of the text within the div gets a 1.3em line-height applied to it, but now any p elements within a div get an additional 1.3em added to them.

Also, sometimes grouping multiple selectors can add more weight to them than is desired, which in turns causes other desired styles not to take place.

* Write Better HTML

Bonus Tip! A great way to become a better CSS coder is to improve your HTML coding.

Avoid div-itis by wrapping divs around everything. Learn to style the elements with element selectors, such as h1, ul and p.

Use a proper DOCTYPE to avoid sending browsers into quirks mode.

Try to code as much HTML as possible before adding any styles. Doing this brings more thought to the overall structure of the webpage and causes syntax problems to be spotted and fixed instead of covering them up with styles.

Further Resources

Here are some articles that further explain some of the basics CSS principles mentioned here.

• 7 Principles of Clean and Optimized CSS Code
• The Mystery of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools and Tutorials
• Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started
• Powerful CSS Techniques for Effective Coding
• 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

About the author

Jeremy Davis is a recent college graduate working as a designer and front-end developer for a public school system. He (in)frequently blogs about web design, web development and technology on his personal blog. He is also *currently accepting more Twitter followers.

*offer ends soon, act fast.

  

By Tim Wright and TJ Kelly

CSS is the best thing to happen to the web since Tim Berners-Lee. It’s simple, powerful, and easy to use. But even with all its simplicity, it hides some important capabilities. Ask any designer, and they’ll tell you that the majority of their code headaches are caused and ultimately solved by CSS.

All designers at some point in their career go through the process of encountering a weird display issue, searching for a resolution, and discovering a trick, technique, or hack could have saved them hours of frustration—if they had only known when they started.

We’ve put together a list of the most frustrating and time-consuming CSS headaches and, more importantly, their solutions (along with examples and further resources). I hope this list will help you save some gray hairs. As for me, I think I feel some coming in right now…

Resets & Browser Inconsistencies

Not all browsers are created equal. In fact, every browser is different. What is the default margin, padding, or font-size of a <p> element? You might be surprised at the wide range of values. To handle the differences between browsers, many of us want to level the playing field and start from scratch, by using CSS reset styles.

The early stages of resets, designers dealt with differing margin and padding values, using a global reset:

* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }

But, as more people used and discussed resets, it became clear that resetting only margin & padding wasn’t enough (and, applying the above rule to every element is taxing on the rendering engine). Thanks to the work of Eric Meyer and other CSS pioneers, a better, more complete collection of reset rules was created:

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	outline: 0;
	font-weight: inherit;
	font-style: inherit;
	font-size: 100%;
	font-family: inherit;
	vertical-align: baseline;
	}
/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
	outline: 0;
	}
body {
	line-height: 1;
	color: black;
	background: white;
	}
ol, ul {
	list-style: none;
	}
/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
	border-collapse: separate;
	border-spacing: 0;
	}
caption, th, td {
	text-align: left;
	font-weight: normal;
	}
blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
	content: "";
	}
blockquote, q {
	quotes: "" "";
	}

As important as it is to note which elements are included in the most popular CSS reset available today .It’s also important to note some of the elements that are deliberately excluded from this list:

• input
• button
• hr

These elements were excluded because their cross-browser differences are so vast that you would have to completely unstyle them to create a "bulletproof" element. They’re so weird, that even then, there’s no guarantee.

Resources for Resets

• Eric Meyer’s Resets and the reasoning behind them
• Smashing article: “Design from Scratch”
• Google BluePrint CSS & Resets
• Yahoo YUI CSS Resets

Box Model — Margin, Padding & Borders

The box model is the basis for all layouts. It governs the dimensions & spacing of the elements on a page. To understand it, we have to understand the difference between block-level elements and inline elements.

Block-level elements, by default, take up the entire width of their containing element and the height of the default line-height. They will stack up underneath each other, top-to-bottom. Therefore, by default, they will take up their own line on a page. Some block-level elements are: <div>, <pre>, <p>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, etc.

Inline elements are, just as their name implies, in-line. They will stack up next to each other, left-to-right. When given content, they will take up the exact width and height of that content. Given no content, they will collapse down and have no width or height. Some in-line elements are: <img>, <em>, <strong>, <a>, <span>, etc.

All HTML block-level elements have five spacing properties: height, width, margin, padding, and border (inline elements have them too, they just work a bit differently). Width and height are tricky attributes, as they require a bit of calculation. When measuring an element’s width, designers must consider the entire box.

In the example below, the box has a total width of 260px. The margin, padding, and border are 30px each (remember, that’s 30px on top, 30 on bottom, 30 right, and 30 left). So, in this example, the margin takes up 60 pixels of the box’s width. Likewise, the border and padding consume 60px each. All together, the margin, border, and padding amount to 180 pixels of the box’s total width.

We know that the box’s total width is 260px, but in CSS the width attribute refers to the content area on the inside of the box. So, for this example, we have to subtract 180 pixels (for margin, border, and padding) from 260 (total box width), leaving us with a content area of 80px. Therefore, our CSS looks like this:

div {
  margin:30px;
  border:30px solid yellow;
  padding:30px;
  width:80px;
  height:80px;
}

Extras

1. All of the examples and rules we’re discussed for the width property also apply to height.
2. margin can support negative values. Use them cautiously but they can prove to be very strong design elements.
3. Don’t forget the units with the box model. Only a zero-value (margin:0;) can be written without a unit specified.

Resources for CSS Box Model

• W3C CSS Specifications
• HTMLsource Box Model tutorial by Ross Shannon
• “Beginner’s Guide to Margins and Paddings” at Web Designer Notebook

Dimensions — Width, Height, Min & Max

Now that we understand how to use width and height in unison with the box model, let’s look at some of the flexibility of CSS dimensions. Modern browsers support min- and max-width (and the same for height), allowing us to get creative with dimensions and create flexible layouts.

Width/height specify the space an object should occupy. They can be measured in pixels (10px), ems (10em) and percentages (10%), as well as a few other units. Defining a width or height for an element will force that element to keep those dimensions, regardless of the content inside it. So, if our content is too big for its container, it will be cut off, hiding the bottom of our content (or just look really messed up).

Min-width & min-height

Giving an element a min-width or min-height will set the element to our exact dimension by default. But, since we only provided a minimum dimension, as the content grows, the containing element will allowed to stretch and all of our content will remain visible.

Min-width & min-height can he useful for form elements like <input /> and <textarea>. We can define them with a minimum width/height and let them expand as the user types.

In IE6, "height" acts the same way "min-height" does in modern browsers as a container will grow with content (something to be aware of when using building for IE6).

Max-width & max-height

If we give an element a max-width or max-height, it will collapse down to the size of our content by default. As our content grows, the container will stretch—until it reaches our maximum. Then our remaining content will be cut off or look really weird hanging of the bottom of a content block.

Max-width & max-height can be useful for browsing long lists (if you correctly manage your overflow – create scrolling if the list goes too long).

Using Max & Min width in IE6

Min & Max width are both great tools to have in your design arsenal, but unfortunately they don’t work in IE6, so what do we do? We usually lock down the width of our site instead of creating the ideal fluid layout we want, sacrificing user experience for out of date browsers.

Luckily, we can use a short JavaScript command targetting IE to accomplish a nice fluid layout with max & min widths in IE6:

#page-wrap{
min-width:800px;
max-width:1000px;
width:expression(document.body.clientWidth < 800? "800px" : document.body.clientWidth > 1000? "1000px" : "auto");
}

In the above example, you can see that the smallest width for this page is 800px, and the largest is 1000px; not much of a flex, but the concept can be applied to any element.

And if you only wanted to use min-width:

#page-wrap{
min-width:800px;
width:expression(document.body.clientWidth < 800? "800px": "auto" );
} 

Resources for dimensions

• Top 10 CSS Tricks from SitePoint
• Cross Browser Min-height
• Min-width for Internet Explorer
• CSS Dimension Properties

Floats & Clearing

A float will place an element outside the normal flow of elements and moves the element right or left until it reaches the margin or padding of another block-level element. Float and clear are some of the most powerful—and the most misunderstood—properties in CSS. To understand it, we must refer back to block-level vs. inline elements.

Applying float to an element will automatically make it a block-level element. This means two things: 1) by default, all floated elements (even <span> and <strong>) will behave like block-level elements, 2) Giving an element both float:left; and display:block; is redundant and unnecessary. Also, using display:inline on a floated image is actually a very popular method of fixing many cross-browser quirks.

Floating a div to clear a div

Floating a div to clear a div is one of those things you stumble upon with some experimenting and frustration. What basically happens is that you can apply a float to a parent element that contains other floated elements and they will all equalize and clear properly:

HTML

<div class="parent-element">
     <div class="floating-element"></div><!--/.floating-element-->
     <div class="floating-element"></div><!--/.floating-element-->
     <div class="floating-element"></div><!--/.floating-element-->
</div><!--/.parent-element-->

CSS

.floating-element   { float:left;width:33%; }
.parent-element     { float:left; }

And, of course you’ll need some content in there to fill out the divs.

There are a lot of clearing techniques you can use to clear floated divs. Some require extra markup, some don’t work in IE 6 and some are great, but don’t apply to every situation. What did I wish I knew about clearing floats when I started? Everything.

Resources for clear and float

• CSS Float Theory
• CSS Float Property
• Clearing Floats
• Using Floats for Layout

Conditional Comments

Back in 2004, when I really got into full-time Web design I used a lot of IE hacks and techniques to patch together sites in an attempt to achieve some level of cross browser compatibility. This can cause very bloated and slow loading style sheets. Everyone was doing it, heck, there were even articles about how to best organize your IE hacks.

Little by little the design community discovered a hidden gem buried within the functionality of the Triton rendering engine (Internet Explorer). You could use IE specific HTML to target specific versions of the browser and then load a special style sheet just to deal with those issues.

<!--[if IE]>
Target all versions of IE
<![endif]-->

<!--[if lte IE 7]>
Target all versions of IE that are less than or equal to "7"
<![endif]-->

<!--[if IE 6]>
Target IE 6
<![endif]-->

Using conditional comments to target IE and cut out your hacks, will slim down your main style sheet, and help load the page quicker in browsers that don’t need the correction code.

Resources for Conditional Comments

• Conditional Comments
• How to: CSS Conditional Comments
• About Conditional Comments from Microsoft

Overflow & Zoom

Like many designers, if there’s time to be wasted on a project, it usually gets wasted dealing with IE 6 and some of it’s weirder quirks. This is where overflow and zoom have helped me a great deal.

Overflow

Many-a-times when I’ve encountered a serious layout issue, a simple application of overflow:hidden on the offensive div would solve the problem. It’s difficult to pin point specific issues for this, but it can happen in any browser (I just had it happen in Safari a couple weeks ago) and the overflow property can provide a quick solution to your cross browser woes.

Zoom

To my surprise, the zoom property is not very well know, but a very powerful tool in dealing with cross browser issues; particularly IE 6/7. Zoom is a proprietary IE property that actually does effect the zoom level of a page (if you set the zoom to 2 you’ll see everything get bigger). As a site effect it also triggers hasLayout on the offending element, and fixes a lot of layout issues. Try it out, it actually saves a lot of time.

body { zoom:1; }

Since hasLayout won’t trigger in any other browser, it’s generally thought to be safe to put zoom in your main style sheet, but it you’re doing IE specific work anyway, I’d advise putting it in with the rest of the IE CSS just in case there are any problems in the future, "future proofing".

Resources for Overflow & Zoom

• Web Master World Forum
• The Power of Zoom
• About Overflow from QuirksMode

When CSS isn’t the Answer

Believe it or not, CSS is not always the answer. Especially now when we live on a Web that is in the middle of the biggest browser war to date. Sometimes CSS just doesn’t do everything we want on as many platforms as we need it to.

Spending hours searching for a CSS solution to a non-critical element that can be easily fixed with JavaScript usually just isn’t worth it. Now that we have great libraries like jQuery readily available to us, anyone well versed in CSS can quickly pick up JavaScript. And let me tell you… if I new more about JavaScript when I started it would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Conclusion

There are a lot of little idiosyncrasies with CSS that you’ll encounter over time with experience and frustration, but we’re looking for ways to minimize that frustration. The best advice I can give someone in dealing with CSS is the same advice someone gave me when I was in college: go to class. If you read the blogs, keep up with all the information and learn everything you can you’ll save a lot of time when you do encounter the inevitable rendering problem. To be honest, half the battle is knowing what a bug is called so you can Google it.

But of course an article like this always poses the question: What do you YOU wish you knew when you started?

About the Author

Tim Wright is a web designer/developer and blogger. He has been an advocate for Web standards and accessibility since 2004. You can find more of his writing at CSSKarma or follow Tim on Twitter.

TJ Kelly is a web designer/developer from Boston, MA, USA. He specializes in UX/UI design, CSS/jQuery, WordPress, SEO, and Social Media. He’s passionate about W3C Web Standards, accessibility, and usability. Check out his blog and portfolio at www.tjkelly.com and follow TJ on Twitter.