12 Essential CSS Coding Tips and Tricks

CSS coding has become a powerful tool for the development of beautifully designed and stunning websites. Those days are gone when developers take the help of the developers for the minor changes. You can make these minor changes in the sites by having little knowledge of the CSS. Now, let’s have a look at what is CSS?

“CSS is an acronym for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is style sheet language used to explain the presentation documents written in a markup language like HTML.”

Let’s discuss the CSS coding techniques that make web frontend designing more natural and beautiful.

What is the CSS code?

CSS Code refers to Cascading Style Sheets, which is the form of style sheets used for the separation in the presentation and content layers, including the layouts, colors, fonts, etc.

CSS Coding Tips and Tricks

Set Positioning with Absolute Positioning

Using absolute positioning on your websites is the key to beautiful website designs. It will help keep the position of a CSS element for CSS development at the exact location where you want to put any component of the website design. You can adjust the CSS element position by giving the size of the top, right, or left edges as per your choice.

Here in this example, you can check how we can implement the CSS absolute positioning by giving the edge size.

position: absolute;
top: 50px;
right: 50px;

Flexible Box for Vertical Alignment

To make the vertical-align more easy and simple, you should choose the Flexible Box Model Layout. It is quite famous among CSS designers since it is very easy to use and a reliable technique for vertical alignment. To use the Flexible Box Layout Model, the only need is to pass the element display: flex, rest you can adjust as per your requirement. Check out the example of Vertical Align with Flex.

.parent {
display: flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
height: 150vh;
width: 150wh;
}

.child {
width: 80px;
height: 80px;
background-color: #9A3E2A;
}

Use of Hover Effects

If you are a CSS designer or beginner, you definitely, already know about the hover effects. In actuality, Hover effects mean when someone moves the cursor over a text(buttons, text links, etc.); it changes its color. To apply the hover effects, you needn’t change the complete code; the only need is to add the element hover. It will change the color of the given text, text link, or button. In this example, you can check by applying the hover effect and how it changes the color of the h2 tag from black to red.

.entry h1{
font-size: 54px;
color: #000;
font-weight: 500;
}

.entry h1: hover{
color: #f00;
}

Make Hover Effects More Fast with Transition

It is excellent to use the hover effects on the text, links, and buttons, but you cannot apply the hover effects on visuals using the hover element. So, here you can use the transitions element for faster transition with the 0.3 seconds. The transition element will make the hover effects on images more pleasant and quick. For more, you can check this CSS example.

.entry h1: hover{
color: #f00;
transition: all 0.4s ease;
}

Use of SVG recommended for Icons and Logos

Now, you would think, why it is recommended to use the SVG files? Right? The reason is that the SVG files are compatible with all the latest browsers and can be adjusted according to the resolution size. There is no chance of using the .jpeg and .gif files in CSS coding.

#icon{
display: block;
text-indent: -9999px;
width: 150px;
height: 150px;
background: url(tws-icon.svg);
background-size: 100px 80 px;
}

Use of CSS Animations

The use of CSS animations is quite often since it helps to gain the attraction of the website visitors. For beginners, it doesn’t look easy. But, you will find it is one of the easiest CSS components when you start working with it. With the release of the latest CSS animations, it has become compatible with all the browsers and running very smoothly.

Here, in this example of CSS animations, you can check how we can give the animation-name, animation-durations, etc.

@keyframes tws-example{
from {background-color: green;}
to {background-color: red;}
}

div{
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
animation-name: tws-example;
animation-duration: 5s;
}

CSS Strings Truncate

It is a very common problem for the designers and CSS developers; they face awkward when the text is too big for a container. Right? It happens with you also? How to solve this problem? Have a look:

You can fix the box’s width by passing a specific value and using text-overflow: ellipsis; to show the element is truncated.

Check the example of CSS String truncates:

.truncate{
width: 200px;
white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

Parallax Scrolling

With evolving technology, website designing techniques are also changing. Let’s know about parallax scrolling- Parallax Scrolling is the technique of modern website designing – when a user scrolls down the website, the background and foreground images scroll at different speeds.

You can also embed the CSS component by using the element transformZ. For more in-depth knowledge, you can check this example.

.wrapper {
perspective: 1px;
height: 100vh;
overflow-x: hidden;
overflow-y: auto;
background-color: D59688;
}

.box {
position: absolute;
top: 12x;
right: 12x;
bottom: 12x;
left: 12x;
padding: 20vh 0;
}
img {
width: 100%;
}

h3 {
font-size: 60px;
color: white;
}

.box.box-back {
transform: translateZ(0);
z-index: 99;
text-align: center;
}

.box.box-front {
width: 1500px;
transform: translateZ(-1px) scale(2);
}

Use Comments

Whether you are a beginner or an expert CSS designer, it is recommended that you use CSS coding comments since it helps your entire team know the purpose of particular CSS elements. For beginners, commenting is essential as it helps them learn about the CSS elements and components quickly. Whenever they forget about any CSS element, they can recall it by reading the comments in CSS coding.

Use of Image Filters

Do you know? You can also apply the image filters in the CSS coding, even without using Photoshop. Let’s learn we can use image filters to get amazing results of website designing. You can make changes in the images using the CSS image filters elements like filter: blur(5px), filter: brightness(100%), filter:invert(50%), etc.

Check this example for CSS image filters:

.image img {
max-width: 300px;
}

.blur {
filter: blur(10px);
}

.grayscale {
filter: grayscale(100%);
}

.brightness {
filter: brightness(100%);
}

.saturate {
filter: saturate(100%);
}

.invert {
filter: invert(80%);
}

.huerotate {
filter: hue-rotate(180deg);

Use of Zoom Hover

Have you ever checked the animations or transitions like-when you move the cursor on an image, it zooms out? Want to get these hover effects in your website also? You can apply this hover effect on your website by adding the element transform: scale(2.4). For further details, check out this example,

.images {
display: flex;
width: 100vw;
juftify-content: center;
align-items: center;
}

img {
width: 100px;
}

img: hover {
transform: scale(2.4);
}

Faster CSS Coding with Shorthands

You can reduce the CSS code length by using the shorthands. It will reduce the code length and make it easy for you to check the code for the next time. Here is an example of CSS shorthands:

You can use this

.header {
background: #000 url(tws-image.gif) no-repeat top left
}

Instead of using this

.header {
background-color: #000;
background-image: url(tws-image.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: top left;
}

Final Thoughts

All these CSS Coding tips and tricks are for absolute beginners and CSS developers. You can make your CSS coding more fun and easy by using these techniques. It will help the developers who are facing issues while using the animations, transitions, etc. in CSS coding. Hope you will find it useful! Happy Coding!

If you are looking for frontend development services, then you can hire a dedicated CSS frontend developer at Tekki Web Solutions Inc.

Read More: Top 6 CSS Frameworks for Web Developers