The Future Of CSS: Embracing The Machine

The Future Of CSS: Embracing The Machine

• By Inayaili de Leon
• Designers hold CSS close to their hearts. It’s just code, but it is also what makes our carefully crafted designs come to life. Thoughtful CSS is CSS that respects our designs, that is handcrafted with precision. The common conception among Web designers is that a good style sheet is created by hand, each curly bracket meticulously placed, each vendor prefix typed in manually.

read more @ : http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/07/the-future-of-css-embracing-the-machine/

The World Of Developers

Developers and programmers are already inclined towards automation. Developers instinctively avoid reinventing the wheel. They understand the need to automate production (at least some stages of it); they understand that hand-crafted code is not needed at every step of the process.

Even if you are a great front-end developer who knows JavaScript like the back of your hand, you still defer a lot of your work to jQuery or some other library. Even if you’re able to write the code yourself, the time you’d save by not doing that frees you to deal with more significant problems. The gains in writing a script from scratch are no match for the gains in being able to focus attention on problems that no machine or automated process can solve.

jQuery, a well-known developer’s tool.

The skills and knowledge you’ve gathered through the years are not in vain, though. This knowledge is what makes you the best person to decide whether to choose jQuery; it’s what makes you able to adjust a plugin that doesn’t quite do what you need; and it’s what makes you capable of determining the best tool for the job.

The Wrong Attitude

Web designers don’t approve of these kinds of shortcuts. This way of thinking doesn’t translate to CSS; in the world of CSS, taking these “shortcuts” is not well regarded.

We CSS authors have a list of dirty words that we avoid saying when we’re speaking with fellow Web designer friends. For example, when someone says they’ve used a CSS framework, the apology immediately follows: “It wasn’t our fault.”

Principles such as DRY (don’t repeat yourself) are not present in CSS.

DRY states that “Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.” This applies not only to code but to every aspect of a product, such as design itself. When DRY principles are followed, we’re supposed to end up with products that are of higher quality and easier to maintain.

read more @ http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/07/the-future-of-css-embracing-the-machine/

text taken from : http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/07/the-future-of-css-embracing-the-machine/

Building Faster Websites with CSS Sprites :: TOP 10 Tutorials of Sprites

CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them

Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

CSS sprites allows you to greatly increase your websites speed by using single image files that contain multiple graphics.That means you can load more graphics with a single server request, juts by combining the number of images and using them in sections where needed.CSS sprites also are a way to reduce the number of HTTP requests made for image resources referenced by your site so it will increase page loading speed. In this post I am going to create a list of useful CSS sprites for our readers. Enjoy!

1. Building Faster Websites with CSS Sprites

2. Coding Apple’s Navigation Bar Using CSS Sprites

3. Image Sprite Navigation With CSS

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

5. Exactly How To Use CSS Sprites

6. How to Create CSS Menu Using Image Sprites

7. Active State In CSS Navigations

8. Create A Sprited Navigation Menu Using CSS And Moo Tools

9. How To Make A CSS Sprite Powered Menu

10. The Mystery Of CSS Sprites : Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

11. Sponsor List With CSS Sprites And Mootools 1.2

12. Video Tutorial : How To Use CSS Sprites

ABOUT W3C STANDARDS

Read this post and get an idea about W3C Standards: 

Most W3C work revolves around the standardization of Web technologies. To accomplish this work, W3C follows processesthat promote the development of high-quality standards based on the consensus of the community. W3C processes promote fairness, responsiveness, and progress, all facets of the W3C mission.

Intro to Standards

The W3C technical report development process is the set of steps and requirements followed by W3C Working Groups to standardize Web technology. Through this process, W3C seeks to maximize consensus about the content of a technical report, to ensure high technical and editorial quality, to promote consistency amongspecifications, and to earn endorsement by W3C and the broader community. Learn more in the introduction to the W3C Process.

Input to the W3C standards process may come from a variety of places, including:

• W3C Workshops
• Incubator Groups
• Member Submissions
• Team Submissions

Value of Creating Standards at W3C

W3C continues to evolve to provide the community a productive environment for creating Web standards. W3C offers:

• a large, international community of passionate thinkers;
• a well-defined, Royalty-Free Patent Policy (policy summary, business benefits, FAQ);
• a full-time staff of world experts on Web technology, including the inventor of the Web as the Director of the organization;
• an effective infrastructure and tools to facilitate meetings and the creation of documents;
• over 15 years of experience in standards development embodied by a well-defined and maintained processthat evolves as community needs change.

Business Case for Standards

Here is a selection of community viewpoints on the value of Web Standards. Please let us know if you know of other useful resources.

• Long live the web (Scientific American, Nov 2010)
• The Economic Importance of Standards (slides), Tim Berners-Lee
• A Standards Quality Case Study: W3C, Arnaud Le Hors
• Business Case for Open Standards, Erik Silman
• The Business Value of Web Standards, Jeffrey Veen
• What are the advances of using standards?, Web Standards Project
• Business Case for Web Standards Wiki
• Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization: Overview , W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
• Making the business case for web standards, Web Access Strategies
• CSS Talking Points: Selling Clients on Web Standards, Greg Kise
• Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)'s Standardization: Fundamentals, Impact, and Business Strategy
• Standards <Meta> Library

Introduction to Standards-Based Design

Below are listed some resources that discuss standards-based Web design.

• W3C's HTML validator, which links to other validators (CSS, RSS, Atom, MobileOK) and tools (to find broken links, etc.)
• Web Site Quality, a list of articles from the W3C Quality Assurance Activity
• Buy standards compliant Web sites, W3C Quality Assurance Activity
• Introducing Web accessibility and evaluating accessibility, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
• Internationalization techniques, W3C Internationalization Activity
• Reources from the Open Web Education Alliance (OWEA), including curricula
• What are web standards and why should I use them?, Web Standards Project FAQ
• A Standardista’s Alphabet, Jack Pickard for A List Apart

text source: 

http://www.w3.org/standards/about.html

Two CSS Level 3 Modules Published: Exclusions and Shapes; Regions

Two CSS Level 3 Modules Published: Exclusions and Shapes; Regions

03 May 2012 | Archive

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group published Working Drafts of CSS Exclusions and Shapes Module Level 3 and CSS Regions Module Level 3. Exclusions and Shapes lets people define arbitrary areas around which inline content content can flow. CSS Exclusions extend the notion of content wrapping previously limited to floats. The CSS regions module allows content to flow across multiple areas called regions. The regions are not necessarily contiguous in the document order. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Test source : http://www.w3.org/

It's an updtate from W3.C

CSS 3 : Visual Effects

Using CSS3 Visual Effects

Create A Polaroid Image Gallery

We always try to stay pretty active with our Flickr feed; our chief instigator Bryan does a great job of capturing the day-to-day and special events and even some of our old work. We wanted a great way to show off these photos, so we turned to CSS3 to create a compelling, fun image gallery. The Polaroid style is pretty common, but we wanted not only to make it dead-simple to create the gallery in the markup but also to add styles that would have required Javascript just a year or two ago.

THE POLAROID GALLERY MARKUP

First off, we created very simple markup for the gallery, something that would be easy to generate automatically using the Flickr API. The markup for the entire gallery looks like this:

01	<ul class="polaroids">

02

<li>

03	<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zurbinc/3971679981/" title="Roeland!">

04	<img src="image-01.jpg" width="250" height="200" alt="Roeland!" />

05

</a>

06

</li>

07

<li>

08	<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zurbinc/3985295842/"title="Discussion">

09	<img src="image-02.jpg" width="250" height="200" alt="Discussion" />

10

</a>

11

</li>

12

</ul>

We’ll be using the title element in a minute.

read more at : 

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/25/the-new-hotness-using-css3-visual-effects/

(text & sources taken from the above link)