Articles Tagged custom properties

I’ve been playing around with CSS Custom Properties to discover their power since browser support is finally at a place where we can use them in our production code. I’ve been using them in a number different ways and I’d love for you to get as excited about them as I am. They are so useful and powerful!

I find that CSS variables usage tends to fall into categories. Of course, you’re free to use CSS variables however you like, … Read article “Patterns for Practical CSS Custom Properties Use”

Have you ever wondered how to customize CSS animations keyframes without using any preprocessor feature, like mixins? I keep reaching for preprocessors for this reason, but it would be so nice to drop yet one more dependency and go with vanilla CSS.

Well, I found a way to account for variations within a keyframe animation using nothing but CSS and it’s thanks to custom properties! Let’s learn a little more about how CSS keyframes work and how we … Read article “Using Custom Properties to Wrangle Variations in Keyframe Animations”

Very often, while using switch variables (a variable that’s either 0 or 1, a concept that’s explained in a greater detail in in this post), I wish I could perform logical operations on them. We don’t have functions like not(var(--i)) or and(var(--i), var(--k)) in CSS, but we can emulate these and more with arithmetic operations in a calc() function.

This article is going to show you what calc() formulas we need to use for each logical operation and … Read article “Logical Operations with CSS Variables”

In CSS, we have the ability to access currentColor which is tremendously useful. Sadly, we do not have access to anything like currentBackgroundColor, and the color-mod() function is still a ways away.

With that said, I am sure I am not alone when I say I’d like to style some links based on the context, and invert colors when the link is hovered or in focus. With CSS custom properties and a few, simple utility classes, we can … Read article “Contextual Utility Classes for Color with Custom Properties”

One cool thing about CSS custom properties is that they can be a part of a value. Let’s say you’re using multiple backgrounds to pull off a design. Each background will have its own color, image, repeat, position, etc. It can be verbose!… Read article “Managing Multiple Backgrounds with Custom Properties”

Animating elements, at its most basic, is fairly straightforward. Define the keyframes. Name the animation. Call it on an element.

But sometimes we need something a little more complex to get the right “feel” for the way things move. For example, a sound equalizer might use the same animation on each bar, but they are staggered to give the illusion of being animated independently.… Read article “Different Approaches for Creating a Staggered Animation”

There is already an env() function in CSS, but it kinda came out of nowhere as an Apple thing for dealing with “The Notch” but it has made it’s way to be a draft spec. The point will be for UAs or authors to declare variables that cannot be changed. Global const for CSS, sorta.… Read article “Faking env() to Use it Now”