Posts from Monday, February 9th, 2015

Run, Salmon, Run

Published 9 years, 1 month past

I was recently asked on Twitter about the status of the fourth edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide.  A fair question, given how long the project has lain dormant!  I have two things to announce on that front.

The first is that I’m really excited to say that Estelle Weyl has joined me as co-author for the fourth edition.  We’re working in parallel, tackling individual chapters and doing technical review of each other as we work.  Sharing the load, especially with someone as sharp and knowledgable as Estelle, will help get chapters out faster, and the overall book done sooner.

The second is that writing is once again underway, with four chapters in process.  I’ve got the transforms chapter done, and the backgrounds and gradients (and maybe foreground colors too) chapter almost done.  Estelle is nearing the end of transitions and animations, with flexbox up next.  What comes after that for each of us is a little bit up in the air, though I’ll probably tackle basic visual formatting next.  Unless I get distracted by something more interesting, of course — truth be told, I’ve been eyeing grid layout with some covetousness in my heart.

So, the book is once again underway, and actually has been for a little while now.  I can’t say with certainty when we’ll be done and ready to compile everything into the Doorstop Edition, but we’re pushing for this year or early next.

As an offshoot of this renewed push, I’ve been expanding and revising my CSS test files so that I can check my understanding of the specification, as well as test the fine details of browser support.  Over the holidays I decided, more or less on a whim, to commit the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle to Github.  There’s no license and no readme, mostly because I didn’t think to establish either when I set up the repository.  Sorry, I guess?  In any case, I regard the CSS in the tests to be public domain, but the actual content (whether inline or replaced) of the HTML files may or may not be, so a single license would have been hard to assert anyway.  I mostly put the files up there as a form of open backup, and also to smooth out the process of managing updates to the tests between my local machine and meyerweb.  Feel free to make use of the tests for your personal education, though!


Writing for The Pastry Box

Published 9 years, 1 month past

I’m beyond pleased to note that my second piece for The Pastry Box, “Words, Words”, was published last week.  The first, “Sunrise, Sunset”, was published a month before that.  (It’s not about what you might think — and yet, and the same time, it is.)

For those who aren’t familiar with The Pastry Box, it describes itself thusly:

Each year, The Pastry Box Project gathers 30 people who are each influential in their field and asks them to share thoughts regarding what they do. Those thoughts are then published every day throughout the year at a rate of one per day, starting January 1st and ending December 31st.

It’s become much more than that, in my eyes.  In a lot of ways, The Pastry Box has become a place where writers feel free to stretch themselves and their writing, and to look at themselves and what they do in new lights.  It’s an incredibly valuable resource.  There are thoughts in their archives that touched, moved, and changed me.

I was invited late last year to be a contributor to The Pastry Box in 2015, and of course I said yes.  I accepted the invitation for a couple of reasons.  The foremost reason is, of course, the honor of being a Pastry Box contributor.  Over the past few years, they’ve had some of the greatest minds and writers of our field participate.  That’s even more true of this year’s roster, and I am completely humbled to join them.  The fact that this is the last year of The Pastry Box wasn’t actually a factor, as I’d have said yes in any year.

The second reason is that I’m very interested to see how I write in an environment where there are no comments.  No doubt this marks me for an anachronism, but it has literally been decades since I wrote for an online outlet that didn’t support reader comments.  That ever-present feedback channel is something I value, which is why I still support comments here, but I’m sure it’s affected how I write.  Not negatively, or even necessarily positively — it just affects the writing, or so I believe.  Over the course of 2015, I hope to find out if I’m right about that.

If you’d like to follow along, please follow The Pastry Box via RSS or Twitter (or both, as I do).  Not just for my few thoughts, of course, but for all the amazing contributors this year.  Already there have been insightful, funny, and deeply personal stories, and a new thought comes fresh-baked every day.  That’s why I’ve followed them in year past, and why I am still amazed and honored to be a part of their final year.


Gradient List Bullets

Published 9 years, 1 month past

CSS gradients are kind of fun.  I know, they’re a little clumsy at first, but I’ve found that with just a little practice, you can hand-author them without more than a brief refresher course on exactly how to structure the first part.  At least for me, as long as I can get the setup right, the color stops are a breeze.

As I’ve said in previous posts, gradients are images, just like a PNG or SVG or whatever.  That’s why you can write them directly into background properties and have them display.  The thing is, though, that you can use them anywhere a property accepts an image value.  Like, say, list-item-image and list-item.

Yes, that’s right: you can define gradient list bullets.  A test page I set up last week (and the screenshot shown nearby) demonstrates a few different possibilities, but there are so many more.

There are two major limitations I can see: one, you can’t layer multiple gradients together, the way you can with backgrounds.  You get one gradient image, and that’s it.  Two, this isn’t supported in Firefox, not even the nightly builds.  Every other desktop browser appears to support this, usually at least a couple of versions back, and a fair number of mobile browsers as well.  A bug has been filed by Boris — thanks, Boris! — so hopefully this limitation will fall away soon.

Fortunately, this is a textbook case of progressive enhancement.  You set the basic bullet style, then define something snazzier for browsers that can handle it (which is, again, most of them).  If your design somehow critically depends on the appearance of the list bullets, then you’ll need to use another approach.  Also, rethink your design.

A third limitation, one not nearly so momentous, is that the list bullets are kind of small as compared to the list items’ font size in most browsers, but a bit bigger in others (as Ana Tudor pointed out; thanks, Ana!).  So if you’re going to express yourself with list bullets, be bold and not too complex, and realize there will be some sizing differences across browsers.

A fourth limitation is performance.  If you make your gradients too complex, especially if they’re radial gradients, you may degrade the user experience, particularly on mobile.  As always, use your new-found power responsibly.  Thank you.


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