The Power of CSS
I really need to find a good book regarding the art of wielding stylesheets to their full extent. I’ve only used them for basic formatting, I admit, and this is a shame, since there’s just so much I could do with them if taking the time to dive deeper into it.
Recently, I was flipping the pages of an old computer arts-related magazine that I had grabbed at the office (or was it at school?) and never finished; that’s when I stumbled upon an article mentioning effects that could be created on images through the use of stylesheets. The image on the right is a screenshot of what I obtained in my browser thanks to the Alpha filter, and to do so, a simple line of code did the trick. No need to fire off Photoshop or any other graphic tool. This is the reason why I want—no, I need—to learn more. I don’t want to remain standing here with the feeling that I’m brushing past something interesting, when I could in fact embrace it with both my arms.
Of course, there’s the problem of browser compatibility, but this is where all the fun lies, isn’t it?
Y Tags: css | internet | stylesheet | webdesign
December 6th, 2005 12:26
Oh so true, Yzabel! Like I discovered a simple bit of CSS gives you drop caps (large capitals at beginning of a post) which I find to be a nice touch, and great for drawing the eye. Not yet supported by IE but who cares!
If you want to see it in action, check my blog (requires Safari, Opera or Firefox)
And here’s the code:
.entrybody > p:first-child:first-letter {
font-size: 3em;
font-weight: 600;
margin-right: 2px;
float: left;
color: #1d79c9;
line-height: 80%;
}
Yep, that’s it! Change the size, line height and color to suit. Also change entrybody to whatever the class for your content is called.
I wish I had the time to learn CSS.
December 6th, 2005 15:02
Ooh, thanks, I’m going to toy with that a little this evening. I’m not sure yet where I could use it, but I don’t doubt I can find a, er, good reason to have fun with that.
December 6th, 2005 18:14
Try Sitepoint’s HMTL Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS I’d like to get to the point where I don’t have to rely on Photoshop so much to implement graphics on my webpages.
December 7th, 2005 01:19
CSS can do so much, I wish I had the patience to learn it. And thanks Chris for the code.