Articles by

Chris Coyier

Founder, writer, designer, spam-deleter, email personality

@chriscoyier · chriscoyier.net

Multiple Borders

Using pseudo element(s)

You can position a pseudo element such that it’s either behind the element, and larger, making a border effect with it’s own background, or smaller and inside (but make sure the content gets positioned on top).

The …

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Multiple Backgrounds Syntax

Browsers that support multiple backgrounds (WebKit from the very early days, Firefox 3+) use a syntax like this:

#box {
  background: 
    url(icon.png) top left no-repeat, 
    url(texture.jpg), 
    url(top-edge.png) top left repeat-y;
}

They are comma separated values and there can be …

CSS Sprites Workflow

When you are coding up a brand new site, I think this is a pretty efficient workflow for how to handle CSS Sprites.…

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Wufoo API Contest

Direct Link

We’re giving away a friggin’ Battle Axe (and $3,000) to the winner of the Wufoo API contest. Cash prizes and Wufoo accounts for life to the second and third place winners as well. Developers, you have until the end of …

Double Click in CSS

With the recent proliferation of touch devices, the web designers of the world are losing our beloved mouse pointer. There has been some interesting talk about how we essentially lose the :hover pseudo class in CSS as well as mouseenter, …

Picross Style Buttons

As in, the game PICROSS3D.

CSS3 Technique

 

Button Button Button

 

.btn {
  color: white;
  font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Sans-Serif;
  font-size: 20px;
  text-decoration: none;
  text-shadow: -1px -1px 1px #616161;
  position: relative;
  padding: 15px 30px;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 0 #666;
…

Cross-Browser HTML5 Video and Audio

Direct Link

MediaElement.js is a jQuery-based package for allowing us to:

  1. Use the HTML5 elements <videoand <audioand have them work cross-browser (including mobile WebKit)
  2. Deliver a consistent UI for controls
  3. Using only a single format

I’ll be using it in …

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Linkage Returns

Way back when I used to do “Links of Interest” style posts. I’m happy to announce now that 1) There is a new design of this site coming within the next few weeks and 2) Linkage is coming back. I’m …

Style Links Depending on Destination 

a[href^="http://"] {
        /* fully valid URL, likely external link */
}

a[href="http://google.com"] {
        /* link to specific website */
}

a[href^="/"], a[href^=".."] {
        /* internal relative link */
}

a[href^="mailto:"] {
        /* email link */
}

a[href$=".pdf"] {
        /* PDF
…

Expanding Images using HTML5’s contenteditable tabindex

HTML5 has a new attribute, contenteditable, which can be applied to any element which allows it to be edited directly in the browser window. Think of text input with a predefined value, but it can literally be any element. Form …

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