Articles in "css"

If I were to divide CSS evolutions into categories, then last year was probably the year that ended with animations and colors getting better; This year, the end of the year seems to be about those ease-of-life features. We had one of those not that long go with :has(), but with things such as sibling-count, sibling-index, functions, and conditionals, the way we write CSS might just change for the better once again. In this article, I want to dip my toe in sibling-index() and sibling-count(), while also carefully adding some functions in the mix.

Read moreabout Styling siblings with CSS has never been easier. Experimenting with sibling-count and sibling-index

In this part of my customizable select series, I want to highlight option groups! Option groups are part of our select interactions to provide clarity, and now, they can be styled. This will certainly not be the last demo I did on the select, and more updates are coming to this element. With a wink to the past, we will be creating a restaurant dish picker, a true “Select Menu”.

Read moreabout The customizable select - Part five: Optgroup, creating a true select menu

In this (long) part of the customizable select series, it’s all about gamification. In this article, I’d like to highlight one of my demos, where I aimed to recreate a piece of UI found in the Monster Hunter games. To re-create this behavior, I had to think in terms of keyboard navigation first. This demo requires quite a lot of CSS, as well as some scripting, and in the end, I do want to highlight some accessibility concerns. This is an experiment on how far we can take it when styling select elements.

Read moreabout The customizable select - Part four: Scroll snapping, state queries, monster hunter, and gamification

In this third episode of my exploration of the customizable select, I thought it was time to show how we can have a little bit of fun with an old friend: sticky positioning. In this article, we’ll be following up on earlier techniques while exploring how we can use the :checked pseudo-class to create a fun open and close effect. We’ll be messing with top-layer functionality, interpolate-size and other trickery to create an emoji picker.

Read moreabout The customizable select - Part three: Sticky Options

Sometimes you get inspired by a presentation or an article you’ve read. For me, an inspiration started at CSS Day last year during the opening keynote by Mathias Ott. One of those side projects I kept placing at the bottom of the pile, until I finally had had enough of it. I had to make it. In this article, I’d like to present a little tool, an OKLCH color picker. A tool created by me using CSS, a bit of React and a bit of AI help.

Read moreabout Oklchroma: an OKLCH color pattern generator that generates CSS variables

In this second part of my customizable select series, I’d like to highlight one feature from Interop 2025 that works beautifully with this feature: anchor positioning. This article contains one of my first demos ever created when styling the select and has evolved with every new syntax and iteration across the months / years. We'll also be taking a glimpse at a few experimental features, but the basis of this can be used today. Let’s take a look at my potion selector with CSS.

Read moreabout The customizable select - Part two: Potions, anchoring, and radial shenanigans in CSS

It’s been a few years since the Interop initiative was set in play. This has historically been one of the key elements in moving the web forward as it aims for a consistent web between browser vendors. In contrast to the “old days browser wars”, we as developers get streamlined features without having to check everything in every browser. The features of Interop 2025 are now known, features to be made stable across browsers by the end of the year. In this article, we’ll take a look at what we should get acquainted with in 2025.

Read more about Interop 2025 - Which browser features to get acquainted with this year and why you should care (iO tech_hub)

The customizable select has entered Chrome 134, allowing us to style this form element to our hearts' content. I decided to write a series about this feature because there are so many cool things we can do with CSS these days to create some really unique and fun experiences. In this first article of the series, I want to talk a bit about the history, while also giving an in-depth guide on how you can start creating your first customizable select as a progressive enhancement, today.

Read moreabout The customizable select - Part one: history, trickery, and styling the select with CSS

It’s Valentine's Day! As usual, I want to write about something I love, and this time it’s still highly experimental but something I am extremely excited about. Something new is on the horizon named CSS scroll-markers and it allows you to create a fully functional slider without the need of any JavaScript. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look, shall we? Here is my first impression of creating a carousel with only CSS and some accessibility concerns as well.

Read moreabout Love at first slide! Creating a carousel purely out of CSS

It’s not always the big features that make our everyday lives easier; sometimes, it’s those ease-of-life features that truly enhance our projects. In this article, I want to highlight two such features: @starting-style and transition-behavior — two properties that are absolutely welcome additions to your everyday work with CSS animations.

Read more about Transitioning Top-Layer Entries And The Display Property In CSS (Smashing Magazine)

The year was 2018, and we were still trying to cope with IE11 and had to find some ways for certain effects. Things that we take for granted with CSS nowadays were not possible and one of the solutions to create awesome effects on the web was using SVG Filters. Fast forward to 2025, SVG filters are still awesome, but I use them less. In this article, I wanted to revisit them, with some easy-to-use effects we can use today.

Read moreabout Revisiting SVG filters - my forgotten powerhouse for duotones, noise, and other effects

Every year, I create a little demo right before the holidays as a CSS greeting card. This year is no different. To celebrate the end of the year and all those new amazing features that came into CSS, I decided to let myself go a little with new CSS techniques. A sort of recap of things I learned and put them in one little CodePen. This time, I’m combining scroll-driven animations, anchoring, and @property in CSS.

Read moreabout Stylish holidays! Creating a scroll-driven Christmas tree in CSS

How can I animate from 0 to auto? I have a fixed width and want it to transition to the width set by its children. How do I do that? These CSS questions have been asked many times on platforms such as Stackoverflow, and I’ve certainly done some searching for those exact questions. I can’t count the number of max-width hacks or JavaScript solutions I’ve used to transition from 0 to auto. No more! I’m done, and for now, I’m going full progressive enhancement. In this article, I’d like to cover some of the benefits you get from adding the new interpolate-size property in your CSS Reset.

Read moreabout Added to my CSS reset: interpolate-size, the quality-of-life feature we all wanted at some point

Oh, how I wanted to write this title for some time! I have Googled these questions before when working with sticky positioning and scroll snapping. It looks like we are finally getting an answer to these questions in the form of CSS state queries and I have been eagerly waiting to play around with this since CSS Day 2023. In this article, I want to show a few first impressions and demos I created with state queries in CSS and Scroll Snap events in JavaScript.

Read moreabout Is the sticky thing stuck? Is the snappy item snapped? A look at state queries in CSS

The CSS Working Group (CSSWG) has recently introduced changes to the anchor positioning spec in CSS. I've focused on anchoring in previous articles and to maintain accuracy, I will be updating an older article (just this once). This article will highlight the specific name changes and their corresponding Chrome release dates.

Read moreabout A spec update on CSS anchor positioning

Have you ever wondered what happened after CSS3? The W3C CSS-Next community group is actively searching for better approaches for how we describe the evolution of CSS over time and identify feature sets as effectively as we did with CSS3 way back in 2009 — and you can help.

Read more about It’s Time To Talk About “CSS5” (Smashing Magazine)

One thing I’ve learned over the last year is to deal with changes in explainers and specs and that naming things is hard. In this update on Invokers, I will cover the new syntax and the new name: Invoker Commands. Once again giving you some control over interaction with HTML from opening dialog elements to creating custom counter buttons and video controls.

Read moreabout An update on invokers: Invoker commands in HTML

Another year, another CSS Day. I’m always happy to return to Amsterdam for this occasion, It’s one of the things I look forward to every year. So naturally, I’m happy that iO still allowed me to go there with my training budget, and the least I could do, is write a summary of this event on the tech_hub.

Read more about This was CSS Day 2024 - the 10th edition (iO tech_hub)

The CSS anchoring API is something that I’ve been following for at least a year now, and I’m happy to see that the first level is fully specced. Even though there are still some shortcomings that I’ll cover in this article as well, the available things look pretty solid and will help us a lot in creating some complex layout structures. Besides that, they are very much needed for the future of the HTML Popover API and stylable selects.

Read moreabout Let’s hang! An intro to CSS Anchor Positioning with basic examples

It’s easy to get lost in a sea of CSS frameworks and libraries, each promising easier styling and smoother layouts. But amidst this abundance, the modern CSS features we have today offer simpler and more flexible approaches without the added dependencies or abstractions. In this article, I demonstrate four CSS utility classes (plus a bonus) using techniques that allow them to be used practically anywhere you need a particular layout — be it Grid or Flexbox — with configurable options.

Read more about Modern CSS Layouts: You Might Not Need A Framework For That (Smashing Magazine)