Last week, the CSS WG resolved to add an inline if() to CSS. But what does that mean, and why is it exciting?

With only a single div and browser-supported CSS properties, it may seem like the tools are too limited. I found it’s not always what you have to work with, but how you look at them.

For me, 2022 is the best year ever for CSS. We got a lot of new stuff supported in stable browsers and it’s just like living a dream. From CSS subgrid, :has selector, container queries, and the new viewport units. So many things to grasp, I understand - but I’m sure we agree that this is exciting, isn’t it?

Recently, the Chrome team released experimental support for a new proposed CSS spec, style queries. In short, they let us query the style of a container, rather than the size only. This can be helpful in cases where querying the container size isn’t enough.

I can’t contain my excitement while writing the first few words for this article. Ladies and gentlemen, CSS container queries are finally here! Yes, you read that right. They’re currently supported in Google Chrome (105) and soon in Safari 16. This is a huge milestone for web development. For me, I see it just like when we started building responsive websites via media queries, which is a game changer. Container queries are equally important (from my point of view, at least).

Developers often reach for UI frameworks like Bootstrap or Material UI, hoping that they’ll save a bunch of time and quickly build a professional-looking app. Unfortunately, things rarely work out this way. Let’s talk about it.

Last month I wrote about some of the exciting new CSS features you can expect to see coming to a browser near you in 2022 for Smashing Magazine.

2022 is shaping up to be a pretty great year for CSS, with a plethora of new features on the horizon. Some are already starting to land in browsers, others are likely to gain widespread browser support in 2022, while for one or two the process may be a little longer. In this article we’ll take a look at a few of them.

I want to introduce you to a new, experimental form control called <selectmenu>. We’ll get deep into it, including how much easier it is to style than a traditional <select> element. But first, let’s fill in some context about why something like <selectmenu> is needed in the first place, as it’s still evolving and in development.

With a bit of creativity using native web functionality and modern CSS, like CSS scroll snap, we’ll be building a no-JavaScript slide deck that allows live editing of CSS demos. The final deck will be responsive and shareable, thanks to living inside of a CodePen.

You know how you can get cardboard boxes that come totally flat? You fold ‘em up and tape ‘em to make them into a useful box. Then when it’s time to recycle them, you cut them back apart to flatten them. Recently, someone reached out to me about essentially this concept as a 3D animation and I thought it would make an interesting tutorial to do it entirely in CSS, so here we are!

We cannot talk about web development without talking about Responsive Design. It’s just a given these days and has been for many years. Media queries are a part of Responsive Design and they aren’t going anywhere. Since the introduction of media queries (literally decades ago), CSS has evolved to the points that there are a lot of tricks that can help us drastically reduce the usage of media queries we use.

One of the first things that drew my attention was the large image of Kody (🐨) on the landing page. He’s surrounded by objects and that, to me, screamed, “Make me move!”

We have many well-known chart types: bar, donut, line, pie, you name it. All popular chart libraries support these. Then there are the chart types that do not even have a name. Check out this dreamt-up chart with stacked (nested) squares that can help visualize relative sizes, or how different values compare to one another

The new CSS accent-color property makes it quick and easy to roll out our brand colors to certain form inputs by leveraging user agent styles. In this article we’ll take a look at what it does and how to use it alongside color-scheme for simple, accessible checkboxes and radio buttons — and imagine how we might use it in the future.

CSS is on a tear lately. Again, I’ve heard of a brand new thing I’ve never seen before, and again it’s via Miriam: CSS Conditionals.

There is a new thing coming in CSS: @layer. As with all new things, it takes time to really wrap your head around it. And despite me tapping at my keyboard about it, full disclosure, I’m not sure my mind is fully there yet. Fortunately, smart people are on the case!

For websites and platforms that provide users with content or reviews, it’s important to include a star rating. Recently, I needed to implement a star rating component for a project and the requirements needed were: performant (doesn’t include images), resizable, accessible, partial star (e.g: 3.5 or 3.2) dynamically, easy to maintain with CSS.

There are currently four well-supported math functions in CSS. I've found each of them to be extremely useful in my daily work. These CSS functions can be used in perhaps unexpected ways, such as within gradients and color functions and in combination with CSS custom properties. We'll learn the syntax for each, view basic demos of their functionality, and explore practical use cases.

Native CSS nesting is coming to browsers soon. With nesting, that you might be familiar with from Sass or Less, you can greatly cut down on writing repetitive selectors. But you can also really work yourself into a corner if you’re not careful. This is an overview of how you can already use it today, the pitfalls and how to avoid them.

In part three of our series we’ll look at how to create more interesting shapes with trigonometry, and how to draw them with the Canvas API.