I am looking for a 'one-stop' solution/tool to give a Photoshop guy who knows nothing about CSS as a means for him to choose fonts and styles that can be made as CSS.
I'm looking for something very similar to this 'CSS Font and Text Style Wizard', but that will also allow for changes to color, backgrounds, be friendly to a 'Photoshop guy' and preferably have built in styles.
Any better tools out there?
You can start with the oh-so-limited but web-safe font list and the standard CSS text decorations. Then move on to the CSS box model. You're better off learning how to "really" do it than depend on a tool
This should fit the bill: http://www.typetester.org/
The link to generate the CSS style is a bit hard to find - it's just to the right of the sample text box
Maybe http://www.blueprintcss.org/ , it's not a wizard, it's a code base which has lots of predefined values.
If he has no clue about css, I think it's better for him to have a consistent basis like blueprint or http://960.gs and overwrite only the typography and other parts he needs, with help of w3schools docs and some wizards like the one you mention.
It sounds like you want something like Microsoft Frontpage or Adobe Dreamweaver. Generating CSS styles for text only is a really narrow problem domain for a full-fledged application. Aside from perhaps some online scripts, you're not likely to find any programs designed with such a limited scope.
Like Diodeus said, anyone who's interested in doing web design should just learn some basic CSS. If 13-year-olds on Myspace can do it, than so can a "Photoshop guy." Otherwise, just get a WYSIWYG editor. That's what they're there for.
But honestly, the CSS involved in styling text is so simple & basic that if that's all you want to do, then it's hardly worth buying (or even installing) an HTML editor. There are maybe 10 commonly used tags that you need to know (if that), and they all have the same 15-20 attributes that are related to text appearance/formatting.
The web is literally overflowing with online guides & tutorials for CSS/HTML aimed at every level of programming proficiency. Anyone who spends even 2 weeks reading/following them should be able to pick up everything that you are talking about, and then some.
Related
Ok, so Less.js has come along, and it seems that my dreams of creating a CSS framework (especially a 'grid' system), with an 'abstracted' CSS language might be about to come true.
That is, 960 and Blueprint are great and all... but it so irked me to put style information in HTML markup, such as:
class="article grid_4 pull_2"
or whatever the syntax was :)
So, now it seems that we can do it this way:
.article {
.grid_container();
.grid_four();
.pull_two();
.last();
}
Weeeeeee!
So, I'm about to get stuck into developing this for myself -- but I'm sure there are some brainiacs out there that have already done it -- so before I get into any heavy lifting...?
Any leads?
Kindly
Daryl.
This is the CSS framework you're looking for - http://semantic.gs/
The Semantic Grid System - Page layout for tomorrow.
Set column and gutter widths, choose the number of columns, and switch between pixels and percentages.
All without any ugly .grid_x classes in your markup. Oh, and did we mention it's responsive?
Brought to you by LESS.js and the creator of 1KB Grid.
I checked out less , it was a push between that and the new sass (scss) syntax, but what made me choose sass is that it has a way to turn css into scss code.
The round trip was something I definitely wanted. Once that happened, then Compass presented itself. I was going to try using something to code everything in python, but it makes perfect sense to me to preprocess the css, especially since I'd like to use HTML5, and if the spec changes, then I can tweak the generation.
BTW folks, I've started that framework I was talking about.
http://github.com/DarylAntony/lesser
I'm having fun with it.
Which free CSS editor has most customizable options/settings for CSS code view formatting?
for Windows.
Should be able to set automatic css code to any of these type of formatting.
http://css-tricks.com/different-ways-to-format-css/
erm, it's CSS, its hardly the most complex of languages, its barely a language. Something like notepad++ (not the notepad built into windows btw) will be able to 'simplify' CSS. You may also find it handy to use Firefox or Chrome as you can edit bits of CSS LIVE, this means you can very quickly see if you the differences of overflow:auto or overflow:scrollfor example.
What should be written first while making CSS layouts XHTML code or CSS code?
Write Whole HTML first then write
CSS according to HTML
Write HTML for an design element and
CSS simultaneously
Write whole CSS first then write
HTML according to HTML
I read on this article's point # 7 "Create Your HTML First" is this advice best to follow?
Edit:
and in this tutorial author also write HTML First then write css using Edit CSS option of web developer toolbar i think this is best way.
In practice, you generally wind up needing to intermingle the two. Start out with HTML to rough out the basic areas of your design, then work in CSS around that rough idea. Typically you'll find yourself needing to add some more markup to allow for additional flexibility (perhaps you need a couple of nested containers to properly align something, et cetera).
I used to ponder about this long ago, when designing websites.
My conclusion was, and I believe it still stands today, that even though XHTML and CSS are meant to be isolated from each other as content and presentation respectively, the reality of the matter still makes the look of the website pretty much depend on the document structure - i.e. markup, XHTML - and thus CSS alone will not give you the magic wand to make your website change its look completely based on a stylesheet. I wish it were so however - certainly, that is the main purpose of CSS. And certainly, that would be the beauty of it - since each is completely isolated from the other, website developers can in peace of mind program the structure of the website documents, almost while the CSS authors can work in parallel and write the stylesheets. Then both are combined, and with the knowledge that the markup does not need to be changed ever again. That is the theory anyway.
In practice this often fails to work - because a document has a top-to-bottom left-to-right (usually) bound semantics, it becomes difficult to for instance, make an element appearing at the bottom of the document structure, appear at the top of the browser page to the user. The limitations work against the theory.
Because of the above implications, and some other real-world limitations of the CSS and markup technologies, I have decided to simply consider markup as something in between the content and the style. I.e. some of the markup will unfortunately dictate style, no matter stylesheet - the sequence of elements being one (see above), pagination limitations, etc - and so, while most of the structure may be isolated from its appearance, some of this appearance will be dictated by it. For this reason, if we don't regard client side scripting (which may aid styling by re-arranging elements of a document) - one way to do it is use XML as content, XHTML as content-style hybrid layer, and CSS to finally dictate the appearance.
Where does XML come into this? Well, you transform (either in browser or server-side) it with XSLT into a XHTML document, which you consider as relevant in the styling process. I.e. if you have an artist list of 1000 entries, and you want to customize how the page looks like, you use the following content XML:
<artists>
<artist name="Moby" />
<artist name="Cocorosie" />
<!-- and so on -->
</artists>
This is considered as an unchanging content, no matter the final style - part of the point of separating content from presentation, something you could not have done fully with XHTML because CSS cannot do certain things. With XSLT however, you can further transform the above into a desired markup ( you can then apply CSS to):
<xsl:transform>
<!-- XSLT is beyond the scope of this... -->
</xsl:transform>
will transform the XML into something like:
<h1>Artists</h1>
<h2>Page 1 of 10</h1>
<ul>
<li><a>Moby</a></li>
<!-- Only 100 artists per page -->
</ul>
And then you style it.
Bottomline is, you get to control each point of the transformation of your raw database content into final end-user application.
Much of what XSLT does with XML, can be instead done with JavaScript on XHTML, but I consider client-side scripting an addition, not replacement to things like XSLT. Then again, Firefox and most other modern browsers can do XSLT client-side, which blurs the distinction between scripting and document serving.
I think it's a mistake to do one before the other. Programming is an iterative process. Write them both until you have something small that works, then do it again. Build on it. Iterate.
If you write just HTML without writing any CSS, you'll find out later that you'll have a bunch of technical debt that needs to be paid off.
It really depends how big is your site... If it's a small website the order doesn't matter. If it's a big website i generally design basic structure in HTML then basic CSS and then move to details in HTML and then CSS.
Few advices.
re-use already made CSS and HTML.
ie. if you already have template
with basic HTML wrappers save it
for the next project or page or
if you set all images to
border:none in your CSS you can
easily save some CSS file with
basic settings
see an object in your head before
designing it
check in 5 major browsers (ie6 ie7
ie8 chrome and firefox)
I usually go with the second option:
Write HTML for an design element and
CSS simultaneously
This really helps, for example, when I am writing html, i write the CSS along the way too which helps me quickly spot any possible layout or cross-browser compatibility issues. If i wrote whole html first and then css, then things become little complicated and you have hard time correcting/styling the entire html which you already created.
As for the link you provided, i would simply say author has his own view and personal way of working. In other words, this also depends which way you are most comfortable with or rather fast.
You can't write CSS before writing the HTML (except for the body tag!), or you'll be working like a blind.
For me, I make a mock-up of the website layout, write down the whole HTML and then write CSS that just makes the layout.
I use Expression design to slice images and add/modify HTML/CSS until I get the final template.
I don't like the idea of going back and forth with code. If I'm at #header in html, it seems pretty logical to me to stylize the header right now. Is good for my mental sanity :D
So I go with the second option: I wrote code simultaneously.
You have to write HTML before CSS.
Your question is like, Is it better to design a car Interior, before having a car ?
Is it possible ? or Is it a intelligent work ?
Given that most designs are not simple, and following basic semantical rules, you will always need to adjust the html code when trying to get the layout looking as you have in mind. So doing both simultaneously is probably the most pratical way, although the other two options work as well; You just need to made adjustments then later.
Sorry , I am not choosing anyone of these..
In first you can't able to write the whole css for your page. although it's better you should write the common css classes and page layouts in the first.ie, after creating the page layout , you just design the page using table or div tags. after , while adding controls to the pages , you just identify the common styles u are using. These styles you can use like css classes. or seperate id. I am following this method for my designing.
i think its better.
By creating the HTML first, you can guarantee what the page will look like on the most basic browsers - it'll be legible on an old phone, everything's in logical order, and you aren't forcing screen readers to recite your site navigation first thing on every single page. That's design #1.
Design #2 is the CSS part, where you actually make things look visibly decent without limiting your user base.
Not that they can't be done simultaneously, mind. Just that's most likely what the author of that article was trying to get at.
See also: Progressive Enhancement.
I personally write much of the CSS first, then HTML, then tweak the two together - one page at a time (apart from common elements). At first it sounds counter-intuitive, but when you think of the CSS as not only styles but as elements that either have a style or have a style of nothing, it's actually very fast and produces lean code.
Once I've got some core styles in place, the HTML is just a question of...
<wrapper>
<div header>
<div this>
<div that>
<form>
<div footer>
... and it all slots roughly into the styles and layout that I've already defined. For elements that needed no styling, I just mentally skipped over when writing the CSS.
My 3 cents:
What's the goal of the webpage? Most of the time that goal is strongly related to it's content.
Thus, the first thing is content. HTML gives content gets it's semantics. CSS gives the semantics a context.
So the order:
content
html
css
But of course, it's an iterative process.
I write them at the same time, iteratively, in modules.
I will build out the general template (or base template) in html/css, do a full cross-browser test, then move on to the additional templates.
This fits in well with .net where I'm using master pages and nested master pages.
I may change this behaviour once IE6 is off the books, as you often have to completely restructure your markup to accommodate it.
I'd go with the second option. HTML in todays web dev is seen as a template to hold content. CSS should be used to format the layout and content within the web page.
Because of this, HTML and CSS should be used parallel in creating web-pages and individual elements.
I've just been assigned the task to refactor a huge 5000 line CSS file... but here's the worst part - I also need to make it IE6 compatible. Any CSS gurus have suggestions of tools, or possibly tips (common pitfalls) for use in my monolithic expedition? Cheers.
checkout sass... it includes the ability to convert css to sass.
http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/docs/rdoc/classes/Sass.html
A sass file is a yaml file that can be parsed down into a css file. It allows you to use variables and alternate organization...
sass example:
!main_color = #00ff00
#main
:color = !main_color
:p
:background-color = !main_color
:color #000000
css output:
#main {
color: #00ff00; }
#main p {
background-color: #00ff00;
color: #000000; }
Some tips:
Use version control so you can roll back when needed.
Come up with a checklist of visual tests to run through after each change, in each browser. A spreadsheet of URL links and things to look for, building on them as you run across problems (think "unit tests" but not automated).
Use a CSS-specific beautifier first to get everything into the format you prefer for braces, etc.
Consider using something like SASS to "compile" your CSS as you go along.
Comment the heck out of things, especially where you're doing IE6-specific stuff.
Future-proof yourself by building a separate file with IE6-specific directives as you go along, or at least use Microsoft's way of filtering them out for other browsers.
Use the W3C Validation often.
Mechanically, I would attack it like this:
<link type="text/css" href="newhotness.css" />
<link type="text/css" href="newhotness-ie6.css" />
<link type="text/css" href="oldandbusted.css" />
Move code from the third (old) file into the other two, cleaning up as you go. That way you can validate your code without worrying about tons of errors in the old stuff, and you can track your progress, Ctrl-Tab between them more easily than between locations in a single file, etc.
(If you can't control the markup to add your CSS files, use an #import at the top of the old file.)
Start from scratch!
Assuming you can check all the major pages manually, I would be VERY tempted to wipe the entire file and start from scratch. Spot-checking for IE6 inconsistencies, you'll be doing nearly the same amount of work anyway, but it will be much, much more painful if you're modifying old, browser-specific CSS.
That 5000 lines may well be expressable in 2000 lines of modern, well-designed CSS. I think most experienced CSS developers would find it less work to write 2k lines of new CSS than modify 5k lines of horrible CSS.
http://www.codebeautifier.com/
which is based on this:
http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/
Not necessarily CSS, but here's worflow tip: use GIT.
start off by importing the files in git;
commit for every minor step, and record what you did;
whenever you find that you broke something, you can identify the exact same step broke using git bisect ( a good description );
For extra kicks, here's a talk about code coverage for CSS to help you quickly weed out unused rules.
As Triptych said, I would start from scratch. Also, consider the following:
use a CSS reset file to smooth out cross-browser inconsistencies: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/
get it working perfectly in Firefox, then tweak for other browsers as needed
study the underlying HTML. How is it organized? Is it laid out with tables? all DIVs? Semantic tagging?
is the CSS used for layout or simply styling (fonts, colors, etc.)?
Once you get a feel for that, study the content. Categorize the layout and elements as much as possible, so that you identify all the common elements and can maximize the efficiency of your CSS
remember the C in CSS, Make the most commonly used font the body font, so that other elements will inherit it by default.
use relative units (ems) for font size, to allow proper scaling of text
try not to use ANY inline styles
make use of Firebug - it will let you inspect an element and see exactly what CSS is in effect and where the rules came from
don't be afraid to re-use portions of the old CSS, especially for things like dropdown menus, which can need very specific incantations to work properly
have fun! starting from scratch lets you implement best practices and learn a ton along the way. When you are done you are probably going to look back on this as a good experience.
there is a presentation here that should get you in the right headspace for tackling this task: CSS Systems
I would be tempted into creating a test suite first: automating page visits (perhaps with Selenium?), taking screenshots, then using something like ImageMagick to compare those with reference images.
Also, I second all the suggestions to use source control. If you later discover that your refactorings broke something that wasn't checked by the test suite, you can add a new test and then bisect your history to find the change that broke it. Git is good for that.
Get a code editor with good syntax highlighting. Also, goodluck I dont envy you.
My initial thought was does some like NCover exist for CSS, as it would be handy to see if all of the CSS is referenced. A quick Google on CSS code coverage found a few things- you might want to look yourself though: http://development.lombardi.com/?p=436
Install sass, run css2sass on your 5000 lines of css, proceed. After you are done with your sass file refactoring, run sass2css to regenerate the css file. Best of luck!
I'd suggest Stylizer - it is a CSS editor with an embedded live preview browser. It makes life much easier when editing CSS files and can tell you which rules affect which element on the page and more.
All of you guys saying he should start from scratch are wrong. You shouldn't. Try to identify the different parts the site uses. Put them on a sheet of paper. Find the parts that match together. Build a structure. Find parts of the application that are the same but are still styled with different rules.
Take that one part and name it. Then match all app parts that use that "pattern" with the correct HTML/CSS.
Repeat until you're done. Break up the large task in small chunks.
Identify whether the original CSS writer used standard methods like using a CSS reset. If he didn't, and everything is defined by #id without reusable classes, well, then maybe the guys saying you should start from scratch are in fact right. But my point here is that you can't just recommend that without assessing the situation.
Using the Dust-Me Selectors Firefox Plugin can be handy. It's a bit like a code coverage tool for CSS.
Tool suggestion: ReSharper by JetBrains. It will autocomplete CSS and rename selectors site wide from the CSS file editing window.
I'm using CSS Filters to modify images on the fly within the browser. These work perfectly in Internet Explorer, but aren't supported in Firefox.
Does anyone know what the CSS Filter equivalent for these is for Firefox? An answer that would work cross browser (Safari, WebKit, Firefox, etc.) would be preferred.
<style type="text/css">
.CSSClassName {filter:Invert;}
.CSSClassName {filter:Xray;}
.CSSClassName {filter:Gray;}
.CSSClassName {filter:FlipV;}
</style>
Update: I know Filter is an IE specific feature. Is there any kind of equivalent for any of these that is supported by Firefox?
Please check the Nihilogic Javascript Image Effect Library:
supports IE and Fx pretty well
has a lot of effects
You can find many other effects in the CVI Projects:
they are also JS based
there's a Lab to experiment
Good Luck
Could you give us a concrete example of what exactly you're trying to do? You'd probably get fewer "Your brower sux" responses and more "How about trying this different approach?" ones.
Normally CSS is used to control the look and feel of HTML content, not add effects or edit images in clever ways. What you're trying to do might be possible using javascript, but a behavior-oriented script still probably isn't very well suited for the kind of tweaking you want to do (although something like this is a fun and very inefficient adventure in CSS / JS tomfoolery).
I can't imagine a scenario when you would need the client to perform image tweaking in real-time. You could modify images server-side and simply reference these modified versions with your CSS or possibly Javascript, depending on what you're doing exactly. ImageMagick is a great little command-line tool for all the image effects you would ever need, and is pretty simple to use by itself or within the server-side language of your choice. Or if you're using PHP, I believe PHP's GD library is pretty popular.
There are no equivalents in other browsers. The closest you could get is using a graphics library like Canvas and manipulating the images in it, but you'd have to write the manipulations yourself and they'd require JavaScript.
filter is an IE-only feature -- it is not available in any other browser.
SVG filters applied to HTML content.
Only works in Firefox 3.1 and above, though I think Safari is heading in the same direction.
None that I know of. Filter was an IE only thing and I don't think any other browser has followed with similar functionality.
What is there a specific use case you need?
I'm afraid that you are pretty much out of luck with most of the cross-browser filter-type functionality. CSS alone will not allow you to do most of these things. For example, there is no way to invert an image cross-browser just using CSS. You will have to have two different copies of the image (one inverted) or you could try using Javascript or maybe go about it a completely different way, but there is no simple solution solely in CSS.
There are filters, such as Gaussian Blur et al in SVG, which is supported natively by most browsers except IE.
Pure thought experiment here, you could wrap your images in an SVG object on the fly with javascript and attempt to apply filters to them.
I doubt this would work for background images, though perhaps with alot of clever positioning it could work.
It's unlikely to be a realistic solution. If you don't want to permanently modify your source images, Rudi has the best answer, using server side tools to apply transformations on the fly (or cached for performance) will be the best cross browser solution.
This is a very very old question but css has updated to now support filters. Read more about it at
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/filter
Syntax
With a function, use the following:
filter: <filter-function> [<filter-function>]* | none
For a reference to an SVG element, use the following:
filter: url(svg-url#element-id)
Not really, and hopefully there never will be. It's not a web standard CSS feature for the reason that you're using CSS to format the webpage, not the browser itself. The day that other web designers and developers think they should style my browser how they wish and are then do so is the day I stop visiting their pages (and I say this as a front end web guy).