The 14 Most Popular CSS Links of 2016 So Far
We’ve taken a look through all the stats for the 20 issues of HTML5 Weekly (our front-end development newsletter) published so far in 2016 and have collected together the most popular CSS articles, round-ups, tools and tutorials readers have clicked on.
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1: 22 Essential CSS Recipes
Ilya Pestov
A great grab-bag of things you can do with CSS along with brief code snippets. Things like gradient borders, counters, and z-index transitions.
This round-up saw nearly 5,000 clicks from readers of HTML 5 Weekly
2: Houdini: Maybe The Most Exciting Development In CSS You’ve Never Heard Of
Philip Walton — Smashing Magazine
Houdini is a new W3C task force with plans to introduce a new set of APIs that will give developers the power to extend CSS itself, and the tools to hook into the styling and layout process of a browser’s rendering engine.
An in-depth look at what the Houdini task force is trying to solve and why.
3: Learn CSS Layout The Pedantic Way
Mikito Takada
A not-quite-book-length set of chapters walking through every major concept in CSS layout, with dozens of applied examples to illustrate them.
This digital book is also available on GitHub, as a single HTML page, and as a PDF download.
4: Balloon.css for Pure CSS Tooltips
Claudio Holanda
Uses special data-attributes for its settings, but has no reliance upon JavaScript at all. The code is tidy and clever.
A popular pure CSS tooltip with over 2,500 stars on GitHub.
5: The Holy Grail Layout with CSS Grid
Ire Aderinokun
The CSS Grid Layout Module is still in Editor’s Draft but is now nearing finalisation. Here’s a look at recreating the old ‘Holy Grail’ layout using it.
6: An Introduction to CSS’s @supports Rule (Feature Queries)
Maria Antonietta Perna — Sitepoint
You can perform feature detection using native CSS feature queries with the @supports rule, supported in Edge, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
7: Introducing CSS Scroll Snap Points
Sarah Drasner — CSS Tricks
The new CSS Scroll Snap Points spec promises to help us lock an element into the viewport on scroll without JavaScript. Support varies wildly between browsers though.
8: Surprising CSS Properties You Can Use Today
Anthony Dillon
Includes things like filters, CSS3 selectors, @supports, and performing calculations.
9: Introducing The US Government’s CSS Coding Style Guide
Marco Segreto and Jeremia Kimelman
18F, a digital services agency within the US government, has released a CSS style guide covering best practices and rules they apply for producing consistent, maintainable CSS code.
An in-depth resource/reference.
10: Textured Gradients in Pure CSS
Oliver Rivo
Go beyond simple linear and radial gradients with something less predictable, using a small base64-encoded SVG directly within your CSS.
This is a pretty cool effect.
11: The ‘background-clip’ Property and its Use Cases
Ana Tudor — CSS Tricks
The most extensive walkthrough of background-clip and its potential uses that we’ve seen to date.
Plenty of examples and CodePen embeds.
12: Ten Things You Need to Know About CSS
Dmitry Sheiko
Including knowing how browsers read CSS, how to modularize and apply design principles to your CSS, and how to best name elements in your CSS files.
13: Test My CSS
Luke Fender
Give this tool the URL of a CSS file and it’ll highlight any unnecessary complexity and help you analyze your selectors for duplicates, etc.
14: Eight Tips to Write CSS You Won’t Hate
Taha Shashtari
A handful of tips on writing clean, maintainable CSS.
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