css | utilitybend

Invoking elements by using only HTML: A first look at invokers

23 Apr 2024

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could click on a button to open a modal with just HTML? How about those file input elements? Imagine that creating a custom play button for video controls would be an easy thing to do. How about custom counter buttons for a number input? This is where the idea of invokers comes in. It’s currently available behind a flag to play around with and it’s definitely one of the most exciting advances in HTML to look out for.

Animating clip paths on scroll with @property in CSS

26 Mar 2024

A polaroid like frame holding an image, with a rotate and scroll icon next to it

While experimenting with CSS, you sometimes discover a technique you want to do more of. This is one of those discoveries for me... I love how we can now animate clip paths on scroll with CSS. From animating an image into a star to creating Polaroid-like images on scroll. In this article, I’d like to demo some techniques we can use to create these interesting effects using clip paths, @property, and even container units to create visually pleasing scroll-driven animations.

Going beyond pixels and (r)ems in CSS

30 Jan 2024

There are a lot of CSS units available at the moment and we mostly still rely on pixels and (r)ems for our sizing and fonts. I say it’s time to do a little freshening up. In this mini-series I will be going around all the current length units in CSS with practical examples.

Taking a closer look at @property in CSS

8 Jan 2024

Browser support for @property nears completion, a great time to delve into some technical aspects of this CSS feature. While I've experimented with @property in demo settings before, I’ve never used it in a production environment. With the upcoming full browser support, let’s take a look at the inner workings and uncover some of the benefits.

CSS Scroll Snapping Aligned With Global Page Layout: A Full-Width Slider Case Study

13 Dec 2023

Have you run into a situation where you need the padding of one element to align with the padding of another element? It’s a common debacle, especially when a page layout is set with global padding? In this article I demonstrate that issue with a full-width slider component that breaks out of the main page container using a couple of techniques to keep it visually aligned with other elements on the page.

Elevate your CSS debugging skills with these Chrome DevTools tricks in 2024

14 Nov 2023

From layers and specificity to nesting, from HD color to (scroll) animations. If there is one thing that makes me keep using Chrome as my default browser while developing, it has to be the DevTools and the information we can find about them. As we’re slowly entering the last part of the year, I thought a cool roundup of new CSS debugging tools would be a great article. Let’s dive into it.

Animations and transitions from and to display none with @starting-style

10 Oct 2023

One of the frustrating things when animating elements was not being able to transition to and from display none. Related to that, it also wasn’t an easy feat to use transitions for elements entering the DOM. In Chrome 117 we have the release of @starting-style, which will make animating or transitioning those cases a lot more convenient.

Grid ideas: Creating a CSS subgrid utility class for rows

12 Sep 2023

A full evergreen browser support for CSS subgrid is just around the corner. Time to have a look on how we can create some interesting implementations in our design systems. This article will be focussing on grid-template-rows with subgrid.

Scroll driven animations in CSS are a joy to play around with!

24 Jul 2023

Scroll driven animations example of a timeline

Scroll Driven Animations are set to be released in Chrome 115, giving us the chance to animate elements based on a scroll instead of time, increasing our toolset to create some fun interactions. I’m sure many great tricks and articles will be found, as this feature opens a lot of possibilities.

Going beyond constants with custom properties

26 Jun 2023

If you love CSS, you've probably heard of custom properties (a.k.a. CSS variables) before. Still, a lot of people seem to use them as constants for their CSS. In this article, I will try to give you some more insights on how you can use these custom properties to create some smart systems or even use them as booleans in CSS and create easy progressive enhancements.

This was CSS day 2023

10 Jun 2023

Another year, another CSS day. I'm not joking or exaggerating that this conference has and always will be one of my highlights of the year. Welcoming, top speakers accompanied with just totally geeking out with other CSS people around food and drinks. This was CSS day 2023 - a short summary.

Advanced Form Control Styling With Selectmenu And Anchoring API

1 Jun 2023

Thanks to the Open UI working community group, there's a new element on the horizon, the selectlist, that will make styling this type of form control a whole lot better. Let's use this element to creating a pattern that you would never have thought possible with CSS alone - a radial selection menu.

The button case - Using custom properties for a smart button system

24 May 2023

Recently, I've created a presentation named “so, you're still not using custom properties?” In this article, I want to highlight a part of that presentation. Custom properties have been available to us for quite some time now. And creating a smart button design system is just one of the many things where they can shine.

Chrome DevTools tricks that deserve a spotlight

25 Apr 2023

A lot of developers use Chrome as their main browser and I'm one of them. There are a few tricks in Chrome DevTools that don't seem to get enough attention. So for this article, I wanted to highlight some of the features that I love and actually use in DevTools, that some of you might not know about.

Open UI and the Popover API

21 Mar 2023

If it pops, it belongs in HTML and CSS! Lately, I had a lot of fun playing around with this upcoming feature. The first version is being developed and it's starting to look pretty good. It's time to handle our basic popovers without the explicit need of JavaScript.

For the love of scroll driven animations in CSS

14 Feb 2023

Animating elements while a user scrolls the page is a popular practice on the web. With scroll-timeline and the scroll function available in Chrome Canary, we get a nice preview on how these scrolling animations in pure CSS will work. The perfect time to create some demos and play around with it.

We've only scratched the surface with :has()

30 Jan 2023

The :has() pseudo class is really a powerhouse. There are so many cool and amazing demos being released everyday showing how it can solve everyday problems and how it can replace actions we did in JS for years. In this short article: Some extra things I look forward to when playing around with it.

Creating A High-Contrast Design System With CSS Custom Properties

26 Jan 2023

Design should never be a trade-off when it comes to creating an accessible web. There are many features coming to the web that will make creating contrast a lot easier. But even though CSS functions such as color-contrast() are only available in Safari behind a flag, we can already do a lot to create contrast in an easy way by using custom properties.

Why you should be using new CSS features today

12 Dec 2022

Unless you have no affinity with CSS at all, you should have noticed that new CSS features are skyrocketing like never before. How can we use these new playthings today? I wrote a miniseries about this on the iO tech_hub.

Creating Animated, Clickable Cards With the :has() Relational Pseudo Class

27 Oct 2022

The CSS :has() pseudo class is rolling out in many browsers with Chrome and Safari already fully supporting it. It's often referred to it as “the parent selector” — as in, we can select style a parent element from a child selector — but there is so much more that :has() can help us solve. One of those things is re-inventing the clickable card pattern many of us love to use from time to time.

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