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HTML and CSS tips and tricks
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the language behind the web pages of the Internet, created by Tim Berners-Lee, and uses a system of tags for applying layout, formatting and links to content. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are used to describe the presentation of the HTML. This section contains howtos, tips and tricks about how to use HTML and CSS.
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Javascript and CSS file timestamps with PHP
Posted November 1st, 2007 in HTML and CSS, Javascript and PHP
Many websites I have worked on have frequently modified CSS style sheets and Javascript library files. In order to prevent Javascript errors or layout and style issues caused by web browsers caching these files, I used to rename the file for each revision, and then modify the name of the CSS or JS file in my PHP header include files. This article looks out how I now do this using the modified timestamp of the file.
Centering a page with HTML and CSS
Posted May 6th, 2008 in HTML and CSS
This post looks at how to center the layout of a page in a web browser, so that it is initially centered and if the user resizes their browser it will remain centered. It is very easy to do using HTML and CSS with only a minor issue in older versions of Internet Explorer to deal with.
Using Internet Explorer Conditional Tags for Style Sheet Selection
Posted May 21st, 2008 in HTML and CSS
Internet Explorer has conditional commenting which allows you to put HTML into your web pages which show/not show depending on the version of Internet Explorer. This post looks at how to do this for selecting different or additional style sheets to load depending on the version of Internet Explorer used.
Internet Explorer 8's compatibility flags
Posted May 30th, 2008 in HTML and CSS
Nick MacKechnie at Microsoft blogged about how Internet Explorer 8 is coming and that has a special flag which developers can but into a web page to make it render the page in IE7 mode. There is more info at the MSDN website and their defining document compatibility page.
Targeting specific versions of Internet Explorer and other browsers with conditional comments
Posted June 18th, 2008 in HTML and CSS
Internet Explorer's conditional comments can be useful for applying different style sheets to older versions of Internet Explorer without having to hack your style sheets up too much. There are several different ways to target versions of Internet Explorer with condition comments by making the code between the conditions look like a regular HTML comment to other browsers. It is also possible to target particular versions of IE and also let all other browsers access the code between the comments. This post looks at how to do this, using a Javascript include file as an example.
Style an HTML form input with CSS and jQuery
Posted July 26th, 2008 in HTML and CSS and Javascript
It's possible with CSS to style a particular form input type without having to assign a class to each one with the special style. For example you may want to add a margin before radio buttons in a form but not all the other input elements. Unfortunately this doesn't work in Internert Explorer 6 (which still has about 25% market share as at the writing of this post) but there is a way around this using Javascript. In this post I'll look at both the CSS way of doing this and then also using the jQuery Javascript library.
Remove cellpadding and cellspacing from an HTML table with CSS
Posted November 5th, 2008 in HTML and CSS
The pre-CSS way to remove cellpadding and cellspacing from tables was to set the table cellpadding and cellspacing attributes to zero. However it's a nuisance to have to do this to all tables and it's easier to do this with CSS. This post looks at how to remove the default padding and spacing from an HTML table with CSS.
How to do the TM symbol in HTML
Posted November 8th, 2008 in HTML and CSS
The character symbols for copyright and registered trademark are part of the HTML specification (those are the C and R in the circle symbols) but the superscript TM symbol to denote trademark is not. This short post looks at how you can insert the TM symbol into your HTML but be aware that because it is not supported by the HTML spec it may not render across all browsers and all operating systems correctly.
Switch off autocomplete for an HTML form field
Posted December 6th, 2008 in HTML and CSS
Auto complete in form fields in web browsers can be extremely useful for helping a user to quickly complete a form. However there are times when you want to disable it, for example with the fields on a credit card payments form. This post looks at how to switch off autocomplete for an HTML form field.
Footer example using HTML and CSS
Posted January 8th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
This tutorial post shows how to have a footer appear at the bottom of a webpage using HTML and CSS even if the content for the page is short and doesn't fill the whole height of the browser window. When then browser is resized it stays at the bottom and moves with the window, but will not overlap the content area. If the content is higher than the browser window then the footer will remain underneath it.
Basic 3 Column Fixed Width CSS Layout
Posted January 15th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
This post looks at how to create a very basic fixes width three column layout using CSS where the footer will appear below the three columns no matter how long each of the columns is.
Internet Explorer 6 min-width hack Part 1
Posted January 24th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Although Internet Explorer 6 usage has dropped dramatically it's still there in large numbers (it's at around 20% across the websites I work on). IE6 does not support the CSS min-width property and there's a commonly known hack using "width: expression". This post will look at some issues with this particular hack and tomorrow I'll look at another solution.
Internet Explorer 6 min-width hack Part 2
Posted January 25th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Yesterday I looked at a commonly known min-width hack for Internet Explorer 6 using the CSS/Javascript expression() which works only in IE and a couple of problems it presents. This post looks at an alternative solution which works and does not require Javascript to be enabled using a table hack and IE's conditional comments.
Using !important with CSS
Posted January 31st, 2009 in HTML and CSS
The CSS !important declaration is something I've seen in CSS code before but never knew what it meant until a few days ago, so I thought I'd write a post looking at !important to show what it does.
Favicon tag
Posted February 7th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
A favicon is the little icon you see in your browser address bar and in your favorites/bookmark list. By default web browsers look for the file favicon.ico in your website's root directory but it's possible to specify a different location for the favicon. I'm always having to look this up myselfif I need to specify a different location so am posting how to do this here as my reference point.
How to make a font italic with CSS
Posted February 21st, 2009 in HTML and CSS
I am always forgetting how to make a font italic with CSS so this very brief post shows how to do it.
Using CSS sprites for image navigation
Posted February 28th, 2009 in HTML and CSS (Updated April 26th, 2010)
I normally stay away from using images for navigation but when I do it's useful to use CSS image sprites so a single image can be downloaded for the navigation. This saves time and bandwidth and means there's no chance of lag of the mouseover image between mousing over and the image being grabbed from the server, or having to bother about pre-loading images.
Stretchy Image Header Banner with CSS
Posted March 7th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
One of the issues with a fully liquid layout on a web page is the banner image is usually fixed in size and when you resize the window bigger there's always going to be some space around the image that you need to deal with. This post looks at how to stretch an image using CSS creating a stretchyimage header banner on a web page.
Wide background image header with CSS
Posted March 14th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Last week I looked at how to do a stretchy image header banner with CSS so that as you resize the browser window the header image remains the full width of the window and the height changes. One of the issues with this method is the image can get quite tall and lose quality as the browser window gets wider. This post looks at how to instead have a really wide background image only showing what the browser window can fit. The rest disappears into the ether.
Force reload of updated CSS and Javascript files with unique filenames
Posted March 20th, 2009 in Apache, HTML and CSS, Javascript and PHP
When a CSS or Javascript file is changed the visitor's browser needs to get the latest copy of the file to reflect the changes, but it will have been cached and may cause rendering or functionality issues depending on the changes. To force reloading of the CSS and Javascript file the files should be renamed each time they are changed; this can be automated by using PHP to add the timestamp of the file into the filename.
Multiple CSS classes for a single element
Posted March 21st, 2009 in HTML and CSS
A useful CSS technique is to apply multiple CSS classes to a single element; this is something I didn't know was possible when I first started with CSS several years ago and I often find people do not realise it can actually be done.
Add an offsite link icon after external links with CSS
Posted March 27th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
It can be useful to have an offsite link icon next to external links on a web page. This is easy to implement using CSS without having to add any additional elements to your anchor tags or additional image tags to the HTML source.
Valid characters for the HTML ID attribute
Posted April 4th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
The ID attribute in HTML tags has a limited set of allowable characters and a web page will not validate if invalid characters are used. This post summarizes what is allowed.
Blockquotes and XHTML Strict
Posted April 11th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Jeffrey Way posted an interesting tutorial about CSS Shapes at Nettuts and wrote an observation about the <blockquote> tag at the end of the post: "Did you know that, if you want your document to validate, you can't place text directly into a blockquote? It needs to be nested within a parent element." So I decided to check it out with this post of my own using the W3C validator to check the results of my tests.
Using CSS letter-spacing to space out titles
Posted April 18th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
I was casting about for ideas for this HTML/CSS post and came across the letter-spacing property for setting spacing between letters in CSS, a property I wasn't previously aware of, and thought it would make a good topic. Adding spacing between letters can be an excellent way of making titles (e.g. <h1> <h2> <h3> etc tags) stand out more.
Using the <label> tag for HTML forms
Posted April 25th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
The <label> tag is useful in HTML forms and is an often overlooked (or not known at all) tag in the HTML coder's arsenal. I know that I often overlook it myself. This post looks at how it is especially useful with checkboxes and radio buttons.
Fieldset and legend tags in HTML forms
Posted May 2nd, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Last week I looked at the very useful <label> tag for HTML forms and this week look at the also very useful <fieldset> and <legend> tags which can help when breaking up a large form into several logical sections, or just to add a bit of style to a small form.
Using optgroup to group options in an HTML select box
Posted May 9th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Following on with my current theme of looking at some useful form tags in HTML (last week I looked at fieldset and legend and the week before at label) this week's HTML post will look at using the optgroup tag to group options together in a select box.
Style HTML form elements optgroup and option with CSS in Firefox
Posted May 16th, 2009 in HTML and CSS (Updated June 8th, 2009)
Last week's HTML/CSS post looked at using optgroup to group options in an HTML select box and this time I'll look at how to style optgroup and options with CSS. This post concentrates on Firefox.
Style HTML form elements optgroup and option with CSS in Internet Explorer
Posted May 23rd, 2009 in HTML and CSS (Updated June 8th, 2009)
Last week's HTML/CSS post looked at stlying optgroup and options with Firefox and this post does the same but for Internet Explorer. This will be followed up with posts about the same for Opera, Chrome and Safari and then I'll present the findings in a tabular format so it's easy to see what can and can't be styled consistentlyacross browsers.
Style HTML form elements optgroup and option with CSS in Opera
Posted May 24th, 2009 in HTML and CSS (Updated June 8th, 2009)
This post is part of a series looking at how to style optgroup and options with CSS. Previously I have looked at Firefox and Internet Explorer and this post looks at Opera. At the end of the series I'll present the findings in a tabular format so it's easy to see what can and can't be styled consistently across browsers.
Style HTML form elements optgroup and option with CSS in Safari
Posted May 30th, 2009 in HTML and CSS (Updated June 8th, 2009)
This post is part of a series looking at how to style optgroup and options with CSS. Previously I have looked at Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera and this post looks at Safari. At the end of the series I'll present the findings in a tabular format so it's easy to see what can and can't be styled consistently across browsers.
Absolutely position an element within another element with CSS
Posted May 30th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
When an element is positioned absolutely with CSS it is by default relative to the window as a whole and not to the parent element. This post shows how to absolutely position an element within another element with CSS.
Style HTML form elements optgroup and option with CSS in Chrome
Posted May 31st, 2009 in HTML and CSS (Updated June 8th, 2009)
This post is part of a series looking at how to style optgroup and options with CSS. Previously I have looked at Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and this post looks at Google Chrome. Next week's HTML/CSS post will present the findings in a tabular format so it's easy to see what can and can't be styled consistently across browsers.
Styling select, optgroup and options with CSS
Posted June 6th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Over the past three weeks I've looked at some CSS styles that can be applied to select, optgroup and option tags and how they are rendered differently across different browsers. The information is summarised here in tablular format so it's easier to compare.
How to do a strikethrough with CSS
Posted June 13th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
This very short post covers something most people who work with CSS should already know how to do: how to do a strikethrough with CSS. I needed to do this today but didn't know which property sets it so had to look it up. I usually find by writing a short post like this I remember it in the future and never need to look it up again :)
Always show a vertical scrollbar in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera
Posted June 20th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera by default only show vertical scrollbars if the content on the page is longer than the window whereas Internet Explorer always shows vertical scrollbars. When moving from page to page where one is short and the next long it can make the layout jump around a bit so this post shows how to fix this for the other browsers.
Grey out a webpage
Posted June 26th, 2009 in HTML and CSS and Javascript
When showing an inline popup in a webpage (as opposed to a popup window) it is nice to grey out the background a little to highlight that the user should now interact with the popup rather than the webpage. This post shows how to do the necessary HTML and CSS to achieve this and tomorrow's post will look at implementing the greyed out background with the jQuery Facebox plug-in.
Disable textarea resizing for Safari and Chrome
Posted July 4th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
The webkit based browsers Safari and Google Chrome allow the HTML textarea to be resized by default with a grab handle in the bottom right corner. There may be times when you want to disable this function so a textarea cannot be resized.
CSS Sprites - making one of the buttons active
Posted August 8th, 2009 in HTML and CSS (Updated April 26th, 2010)
A few months ago I posted using CSS sprites for image navigation which looks at how to use a single image for navigation; when the mouse moves over the background position is changed and some effect happens e.g. the background color changes. I recently received an email asking how to make one of the buttons active/selected so have written this breif follow-up post covering this.
CSS hack for IE6 and IE7
Posted August 15th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
A couple of days ago I was having some very minor layout issues in IE6 and IE7 when trying to fit some form controls into an exact sized box. All other browsers and versions rendered the layout the same except for IE6 and IE7 so I needed a CSS hack which would work in those two browsers only.
Allowing div layers to float over Flash/Vimeo/YouTube etc
Posted August 22nd, 2009 in HTML and CSS
By default Flash content in a web page will appear on top of other elements on the page, including floating menus, inline popups etc. This can be pretty annoying if you have a flyout menu on your page and it goes behind the Flash video and this post shows how simple it is to fix. This works in all browsers inclding IE6+.
HTML entities for British Pound and Euro symbols
Posted August 29th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
The HTML entities for the British Pound and Euro are as obvious as they should be, but I found myself recently having to look them up just to make sure I was right...
CSS cursor property
Posted September 5th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Occasionally I've needed to specifically make the mouse a hand with HTML and CSS when mousing over a particular area and I'm always forgetting the property used to set it, so this quick post is for my own quick reference, and shows example of the other property values too.
Prevent dotted border from appearing when clicking links in Firefox
Posted September 12th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
The other day I wrote about how to do an animated information box with jQuery and in doing so was reminded of an annoying habit Firefox has of putting a dotted outline around links when they're clicked. This post shows the simple solution to this problem.
HTML form workaround for dealing with mutiple submit buttons and the <enter> key
Posted September 19th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
If there are multiple submit buttons on a form, browsers will usually "click" the first one on the form if the user presses the <enter> key when in a text input field. This can be an issue if the first submit button isn't the one you want to submit the form by default. This post shows a workaround for this.
Minify Javascript and CSS with YUI Compressor
Posted September 25th, 2009 in HTML and CSS and Javascript
I've previously posted about minifying Javascript using a PHP port of Douglas Crockford's JSMin Javascript minifier but learned today of the YUI Compressor which does an even better job of minifying by replacing local symbols with 1 letter symbol names and other optimizations. It is also able to compress CSS files.
Solution for <label> ignoring width styling
Posted September 26th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
There are a lot of tutorials around which advocate using pure CSS for forms (and not to use tables) and these often use the <label> tag for the fieldname. An issue I have come across is that <label> is an inline element so setting the width is supposed to have no effect; in practise setting the width will work in Internet Explorer but not other browsers. This post shows the simple solution so other browsers can also assign a width to a label.
How to use letters and roman numerals instead of numbers in an HTML ordered list
Posted October 3rd, 2009 in HTML and CSS
HTML ordered lists <ol> use normal numbers by default but it's also possible to use lower or upper case latin letters (i.e. a b c and A B C) and roman numbers in upper or lower case (i.e. i ii iii and I I III) by using the "type" attribute.
Starting an HTML ordered list with a number other than 1
Posted October 10th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
Last week I looked at how to use letters and roman numerals instead of numbers in an HTML ordered list and in this week's HTML post look at how the numbering can be started from a number other than the default 1.
Style an HTML input field by name and type
Posted November 8th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
If a form has a number of input fields they can each be styled using the element's "name" property as well as the "id" property. This is useful if you don't want to have to assign ids to all of your form elements.
How to preserve comments with the YUI Compressor
Posted November 28th, 2009 in HTML and CSS and Javascript
I use the YUI Compressor to minify Javascript and CSS files. By default it will remove all comments from the files but there is a simple solution to retaining comments in files, which is often necessary for example when preserving copyright and license terms of use etc.
Using ellipsis with HTML and CSS
Posted December 5th, 2009 in HTML and CSS and Javascript
If the text is too wide to fit into a container, a nice solution can be to have ellipsis to show there's more information available. While not currently part of the official HTML specifications, it is possible to have ellipsis defined in CSS and it works for Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Opera. It doesn't work for Firefox but there's a workaround that can be done with jQuery.
Getting ready for HTML 5
Posted December 12th, 2009 in HTML and CSS
I started working on the template for a new website today and decided to have a look at HTML 5 for laying it out. Everything was looking nice until I discovered that Internet Explorer does not allow CSS styling for elements which it does not know about (e.g. <header> <section> etc). There is a Javascript workaround but I prefer not to use that so show here my solution for the time being.
Make an entire table row clickable with jQuery
Posted December 22nd, 2009 in HTML and CSS and Javascript
If an HTML table row contains only one <a> link it can be useful to make the entire row clickable and make it activate that link. This post shows how to make the entire row clickable with jQuery so that clicking anywhere in the row is the same as clicking that link.
How to specify custom user styles in Firefox
Posted December 27th, 2009 in Applications and HTML and CSS
It is possible to specify custom user styles in Firefox. These override the default browser styles, and are in turn overridden by the website's styles. User styles can be made to not be overridden by making them !important.
CSS :first-child and :last-child selectors
Posted January 2nd, 2010 in HTML and CSS
The CSS selectors :first-child and :last-child are used to apply styling to the first and last child elements of the parent. :first-child is part of the CSS 2.1 specification and :last-child CSS 3 so support is slightly limited for :first-child and more limited for :last-child.
"Clearing" floats with overflow: auto
Posted January 9th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
It is so simple to clear floating HTML elements with overflow:auto but this doesn't seem to be common knowledge. The most common way to clear floats is with a float clearing div, a hackish method involving writing content using the :after pseudo property, or unbelievably using <br clear="all"> as I saw posted on another site yesterday. This post looks at the simplicity of overflow:auto.
Avoid over-using CSS classes
Posted January 23rd, 2010 in HTML and CSS
A couple of weeks ago I checked out a new site that had just launched and decided I'd take a look at the source and see what they'd done behind the scenes. The overuse of CSS classes on that website was what prompted me to write this post. You don't need to make every sub-element have a class; give the parent the class instead and simplify your code and style sheets with child element styling.
Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking
Posted January 30th, 2010 in HTML and CSS and Javascript (Updated April 19th, 2010)
Google recently released updated tracking code for Google Analytics which allows for asynchronous tracking. This means the analytics tracking can be done at the same time as rendering other content and therefore won't delay other page content from rendering. This results in what appears to be faster rendering pages.
Add an icon before or after a link with CSS
Posted February 6th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
CSS has a matching syntax for selectors which makes it possible to match the filename extension at the end of an href. This makes it easy to add an icon which relates to the link before or after the text part of the link.
Cross browser transparency
Posted February 20th, 2010 in HTML and CSS (Updated May 12th, 2010)
The CSS3 standard introduces the opacity property for making elements opaque or transparent. Older browser also have support for opacity using various other properties and, in the case of Internet Explorer, filters. This post looks at how to achieve cross-browser, and backward compatible transparency.
Remove webkit border on input on focus
Posted February 28th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
When a text input has focus it is slightly highlighted in Firefox and Internet Explorer and much more so in the the webkit based browsers (Chrome, Safari, Konqueror). Normally this behavior should be left as-is but I personally recently needed to prevent the highlighting behavior, especially in the webkit based browsers.
Show an icon in an HTML input using CSS
Posted March 6th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
Today's post is a relatively simple tip to add an icon into an HTML text input using CSS so that it sits inside the input box and the text does not appear over it at all.
Required attributes for HTML5 image input
Posted March 20th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
I recently validated an HTML 5 page using the W3C validator service and was surprised to discover which attributes are required (and not required) for an image input. Note that of course the HTML5 specification is still under development at the time of this post so is subject to change.
CSS Sprites - making one of the buttons active with the body id
Posted April 26th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
In a couple of posts last year I covered how to use CSS sprites for navigation and then how to make one of the buttons active on the page. This post is in response to a comment by "Jessica" on the second page which shows how to make one of the buttons active based on the id of the page's <body> tag.
Aligning HTML bullet points against the margin
Posted May 4th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
Paddings and margins on <ul> and <ol> elements in HTML are fairly inconsistent across browsers, even when they are both explicitly set. This post looks at how to try to align these bullets points against a margin as consistently as possible across browsers.
Change element's properties with CSS based on body id or class
Posted May 6th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
This post shows a similar technique to the one used in my CSS Sprites - making one of the buttons active with the body id post from the other day. In this post I show how to modify a particular element on a page depending on the body's id or class. In this example it's to change the masthead that appears at the top of the page.
CSS background transparency that doesn't affect the text on top
Posted May 12th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
A little while back I posted how to do cross browser transparency, using an example with some white text on top of a div with a black background which had opacity set to 75% so the content behind it could show though. As pointed out by a reader in the comments on that post, this makes the content contained within the element also transparent so this post shows a way to make the background opaque but the text on top of it not.
Different CSS style rules for printing
Posted May 26th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
This post looks at how to specify different CSS style rules for printing: using a secondary style sheet for print only, or defining the print styles in the main style sheet using @media print.
HTML/CSS background-position
Posted May 28th, 2010 in HTML and CSS
The HTML/CSS background position can be set using px, % and the constants top, center, bottom for vertical positioning and left, center, right for horizontal positioning. This post looks at the order they need to be in, and a "gotcha" that can catch you out when moving from constants to pixels.
jQuery: hide text when the page is loaded and show it later
Posted June 21st, 2010 in HTML and CSS and Javascript
This post is a response to a question asked on my "Show and hide an element with jQuery - Part 1 of 2" article about how to hide text when the page loads and then show it with a button (or some other method to reveal the text at a later time).
HTML5: Wrap Block-Level Elements with anchor tags
Posted July 27th, 2010 in HTML and CSS and Offsite Articles
David Walsh posted "HTML5: Wrap Block-Level Elements with A’s" which looks at a new feature in HTML5 which allows anchor tags to contain block level elements such as divs. This saves having to put many additional <a> tags within elements to make them all contain the same link, or do workarounds with Javascript.
HTML5 Tips, Tricks and Techniques
Posted July 28th, 2010 in HTML and CSS and Offsite Articles
The post "HTML5 Unleashed: Tips, Tricks and Techniques" over at w3avenue has a really good introduction to HTML5 covering new features, browser support, semantic markup, form enhancements and more, along with some screenshots and demos.
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