Cheat Sheets
Posted by: Dhiraj kumar
Posted by: Dhiraj kumar
CSS frameworks have grown in popularity recently, enabling developers to rapidly prototype designs. The idea of CSS Frameworks is to do all the heavy lifting of the repetitive tasks you do over and over again on each site, allowing you to get faster results and get to the fun stuff designers love. In this post we includes an overview of the 20+ most popular CSS Frameworks; showcasing handpicked tutorials for using each of them among other useful tools and resources you will definitely find useful and time-saving.
Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.
Elements is a down to earth CSS framework. It was built to help designers write CSS faster and more efficient. Elements goes beyond being just a framework, it’s its own project workflow.It has everything you need to complete your project, which makes you and your clients happy. Read the Overview for more information.
The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem
YUI is a free, open source JavaScript and CSS framework for building richly interactive web applications. YUI is provided under a BSD license and is available on GitHub for forking and contribution.
“Yet Another Multicolumn Layout” (YAML) is an (X)HTML/CSS framework for creating modern and flexible floated layouts. The structure is extremely versatile in its programming and absolutely accessible for end users.
A full featured and beautiful CSS framework which originally combined the best of Blueprint, Tripoli (hence the name), Hartija, 960.gs, and Elements, but has now found a life of its own.
A simple CSS framework.
Yup, ‘fraid so, but this one’s different… It combines years of my best dev tips, tricks and practices in one handy file.
SenCSs stands for Sensible Standards CSS baseline, (pronounced “sense”). It supplies sensible styling for all repetitive parts of your CSS, and doesn’t force a lay-out system on you. This allows you to focus on actually developing your website’s style.
Emastic is a CSS Framework, it’s continuing mission: to explore a strange new world, to seek out new life and new web spaces, to boldly go where no CSS Framework has gone before.
jQuery UI provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications.
Gridless is an optionated HTML5 and CSS3 boilerplate for making mobile first responsive, cross-browser websites with beautiful typography.
Baseline is a framework built around the idea of a “real” baseline grid.
Compass is an open-source CSS Authoring Framework.
FEM CSS Framework is a 960px width + 12 column grid system + CSS common styles, to easy and fast develop web layouts
Fresh baked forms for your websites!
Less Framework is a CSS grid system for designing adaptive websites. It contains 4 layouts and 3 sets of typography presets, all based on a single grid.
Gravity is a SASS based framework for making powerful, easily maintainable HTML5 websites. It helps you rapidly prototype your ideas and will generally make your life much easier.
G5 Framework started as a personal project. In an attempt to speed up workflow, reuse the best coding practices & similar coding techniques, the framework serves as a starter file for new websites.
Posted by: Dhiraj kumar
HTML and XHTML are the foundation of all web development. HTML is used as the graphical user interface in client-side programs written in JavaScript. Server-side languages like PHP and Java also receive data from web pages and use HTML as the output mechanism. The emerging Ajax technologies likewise use HTML and XHTML as their visual engine. HTML was once a very loosely-defined language with very little standardization, but as it has become more important, the need for standards has become more apparent. Regardless of whether you choose to write HTML or XHTML, understanding the current standards will help you provide a solid foundation that will simplify all your other web coding. Fortunately HTML and XHTML are actually simpler than they used to be, because much of the functionality has moved to CSS.
Every page (HTML or XHTML shares certain elements in common.) All are essentially plain text files, with the .html extension. HTML files should not be created with a word processor, but in some type of editor that creates plain text. Every page has a large container (HTML or XHTML) and two major subcontainers, the head and the body. The head area contains information useful behind the scenes, such as CSS formatting instructions and JavaScript code. The body contains the part of the page that is visible to the user.
An HTML document is based on the notion of tags. A tag is a piece of text inside angle brackets (<>). Tags typically have a beginning and an end, and usually contain some sort of text inside them. For example, a paragraph is normally denoted like this:
<p> This is my paragraph. </p>
The <p> indicates the beginning of a paragraph. Text is then placed inside the tag, and the end of the paragraph is denoted by an end tag, which is similar to the start tag but with a slash (</p>.) It is common to indent content in a multi-line tag, but it is also legal to place tags on the same line:
<p>This is my paragraph.</p>
Tags are sometimes enhanced by attributes, which are name value pairs that modify the tag. For example, the <img> tag (used to embed an image into a page) usually includes the following attributes:
<img src = "myPic.jpg" Alt = "this is my picture" />
The src attribute describes where the image file can be found, and the alt attribute describes alternate text that is displayed if the image is unavailable.
Tags can be (and frequently are) nested inside each other. Tags cannot overlap, so <a><b></a></b> is not legal, but <a><b></b></a> is fine.
HTML has been around for some time. While it has done its job admirably, that job has expanded far more than anybody expected. Early HTML had very limited layout support. Browser manufacturers added many competing standards and web developers came up with clever workarounds, but the result is a lack of standards and frustration for web developers. The latest web standards (XHTML and the emerging HTML 5.0 standard) go back to the original purpose of HTML: to describe the structure of the data only, and leave all formatting to CSS (Please see the DZone CSS Refcard Series). XHTML is nothing more than HTML code conforming to the stricter standards of XML. The same style guidelines are appropriate whether you write in HTML or XHTML (but they tend to be enforced in XHTML):
Most of the requirements of XHTML turn out to be good practice whether you write HTML or XHTML. I recommend using XHTML strict so you can validate your code and know it follows the strictest standards.
XHTML has a number of flavors. The strict type is recommended, as it is the most up-to-date standard which will produce the most predictable results. You can also use a transitional type (which allows deprecated HTML tags) and a frameset type, which allows you to add frames. For most applications, the strict type is preferred.
The following code can be copied and pasted to form the foundation of a basic web page:
<html> <head> <title></title> </head> <body> </body> </html>
The XHTML template is a bit more complex, so it’s common to keep a copy on your desktop for quick copy and paste work, or to define it as a starting template in your editor.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html lang="EN" dir="ltr" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/xml; charset=utf-8" /> <title></title> </head> <body> </body> </html>
The structure of your web pages is critical to the success of programs based on those pages, so use a validating tool to ensure you haven’t missed anything.
Validating Tool | Description |
WC3 | The most commonly used validator is online at http://validator.w3.org This free tool checks your page against the doctype you specify and ensures you are following the standards. This acts as a ‘spell-checker’ for your code and warns you if you made an error like forgetting to close a tag. |
HTML Tidy | There’s an outstanding free tool called HTML tidy which not only checks your pages for validity, but also fixes most errors automatically. Download this tool at http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ or (better) use the HTML validator extension to build tidy into your browser. |
HTML Validator extension | The extension mechanism of Firefox makes it a critical tool for web developers. The HTML Validator extension is an invaluable tool. It automatically checks any page you view in your browser against both the w3 validation engine and tidy. It can instantly find errors, and repair them on the spot with tidy. With this free extension available athttp://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/, there’s no good reason not to validate your code. |
Some of the best tools for web development are available through the open source community at no cost at all. Consider these application as part of your HTML toolkit:
Open Source Tool | Description |
Aptana | http://www.aptana.com/ This free programmer’s editor (based on Eclipse) is a full-blown IDE customized for HTML / XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax. It offers code completion, syntax highlighting, and FTP support within the editor. |
Web Developer Toolbar | https://www.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60 This Firefox extension adds numerous debugging and web development tools to your browser. |
Firebug | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843 is an add-on that adds full debugging capabilities to the browser. The firebug lite version even works with IE. |
The following elements are part of every web page.
Element | Description |
<html></html> | Surrounds the entire page |
<head></head> | Contains header information (metadata, CSS styles, JavaScript code) |
<title></title> | Holds the page title normally displayed in the title bar and used in search results |
<body></body> | Contains the main body text. All parts of the page normally visible are in the body |
Most pages contain the following key structual elements:
Element | Name | Description |
<h1></h1> | Heading 1 | Reserved fo strongest emphasis |
<h2></h2> | Heading 2 | Secondary level heading. Headings go down to level 6, but <h1> through <h3> are most common |
<p></p> | Paragraph | Most of the body of a page should be enclosed in paragraphs |
<div></div> | Division | Similar to a paragraph, but normally marks a section of a page. Divs usually contain paragraphs |
Web pages frequently incorporate structured data so HTML includes several useful list and table tags:
Element | Name | Description |
<ul></ul> | Unordered list | Normally these lists feature bullets (but that can be changed with CSS) |
<ol></ol> | Ordered list | These usually are numbered, but this can be changed with CSS |
<li></li> | List item | Used to describe a list item in an unordered list or an ordered list |
<dl></dl> | Definition list | Used for lists with name-value pairs |
<dt></dt> | Definition term | The name in a name-value pair. Used in definition lists |
<dd></dd> | Definition description | The value (or definition) of a name, value pair |
<table></table> | Table | Defines beginning and end of a table |
<tr></tr> | Table row | Defines a table row. A table normally consists of several <tr> pairs (one per row) |
<td></td> | Table data | Indicates data in a table cell. <td> tags occur within <tr> (which occur within <table>) |
<th></th> | Table heading | Indicates a table cell to be treated as a heading with special formatting |
HTML supports three primary list types. Ordered lists and unordered lists are the primary list types. By default, ordered lists use numeric identifiers, and unordered lists use bullets.
However, you can use the list-style-type CSS attribute to change the list marker to one of several types.
<ol> <li>uno</li> <li>dos</li> <li>tres</li> </ol>
Lists can be nested inside each other
<ul> <li>English <ol> <li>One <li>Two <li>Three </ol> </li> <li>Spanish <ol> <li>uno <li>dos <li>tres </ol> </li> </ul>
The special definition list is used for name / value pairs. The definition term (dt) is a word or phrase that is used as the list marker, and the definition data is normally a paragraph:
<h2>Types of list</h2> <dl> <dt>Unordered list</dt> <dd>Normally used for bulleted lists, where the order of data is not important.</dd> <dt>Ordered lists</dt> <dd>Normally use numbered items, for example a list of instructions where the order is significant.</dd> <dt>Definition list</dt> <dd>Used to describe a term and definition. Often a good alternative to a two-column table</dd> </dl>
Tables were used in the past to overcome the page-layout shortcomings of HTML. That use is now deprecated in favor of CSS-based layout. Use tables only as they were intended, to display tabular data.
A table mainly consists of a series of table rows (tr.) Each table row consists of a number of table data (tr) elements. The table heading (th) element can be used to indicate a table cell should be marked as a heading.
The rowspan and colspan attributes can be used to make a cell span more than one row or column.
Each row of a table should have the same number of columns, and each column should have the same number of rows. Use of the span attribute may require adjustment to other rows or columns.
<table border = "1"> <tr> <th> </th> <th>English</th> <th>Spanish</th> </tr> <tr> <th>1</th> <td>One</td> <td>Uno</td> </tr> <tr> <th>2</th> <td>Two</td> <td>Dos</td> </tr> </table>
Links and images are both used to incorporate external resources into a page. Both are reliant on URIs (Universal Resource Indicators), commonly referred to as URLs or addresses.
The anchor tag is used to provide the basic web link:
<a href = "http://www.google.com">link to Google</a>
In this example, http://www.google.com is the site to be visited. The text “link to Google” will be highlighted as a link.
The link tag is used primarily to pull in external CSS files:
<link rel = "stylesheet" type = "text/css" href = "mySheet.css" />
The img tag is used in to attach an image. Valid formats are .jpg, .png, and .gif. An image should always be accompanied by an alt attribute describing the contents of the image.
<img src = https://dhirajkumarsingh.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/dhiraj1.jpg alt = "Dhiraj kumar" />
Image formatting attributes (height, width, and align) are deprecated in favor of CSS.
HTML / XHTML includes several specialty tags. These are used to describe special purpose text. They have default styling, but of course the styles can be modified with CSS.
The quote tag is intended to display a single line quote:
<quote>Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country</quote>
Quote is an inline tag. If you need a block level quote, use <blockquote>.
The <pre> tag is used for pre-formatted text. It is sometimes used for code listings or ASCII art because it preserves carriage returns. Pre-formatted text is usually displayed in a fixed-width font.
<pre> for i in range(10): print i </pre>
The code format is used to manage pre-formatted text, especially code listings. It is very similar to pre.
<code> while i < 10: i += 1 print i </code>
This tag is used to mark multi-line quotes. Frequently it is set off with special fonts and indentation through CSS. It is (not surprisingly) a block-level tag.
<blockquote> Quoth the raven: Nevermore </blockquote>
The span tag is a vanilla inline tag. It has no particular formatting of its own. It is intended to be used with a class or ID when you want to apply style to an inline chunk of code.
<span class = "highlight">This text will be highlighted.
The em tag is used for standard emphasis. By default, <em> italicizes text, but you can use CSS to make any other type of emphasis you wish.
This tag represents strong emphasis. By default, it is bold, but you can modify the formatting with CSS.
Forms are the standard user input mechanism in HTML / XHTML. You will need another language like JavaScript or PHP to read the contents of the form elements and act upon them.
A number of tags are used to describe the structure of the form. Begin by looking over a basic form:
<form action = ""> <fieldset> <legend>My form</legend> <label for = "txtName">Name</label> <input type = "text" id = "txtName" /> <button type = "button" Onclick = "doSomething()"> Do something </button> </fieldset> </form>
The <form></form> pair describes the form. In XHTML strict, you must indicate the form’s action property. This is typically the server-side program that will read the form. If there is no such program, you can set the action to null (“”) The method attribute is used to determine whether the data is sent through the get or post mechanism.
Most form elements are inline tags, and must be encased in a block element. The fieldset is designed exactly for this purpose. Its default appearance draws a box around the form. You can have multiple fieldsets inside a single form.
You can add a legend inside a fieldset. This describes the purpose of the fieldset.
A label is a special inline element that describes a particular field. A label can be paired with an input element by putting that element’s ID in the label’s for attribute.
The input element is a general purpose inline element. It is meant to be used inside a form, and it is the basis for several types of more specific input. The subtype is indicated by the type attribute. Input elements usually include an id attribute (used for CSS and JavaScript identification) and / or a name attribute (used in server-side programming.) The same element can have both a name and an id.
This element allows a single line of text input:
<input type = "text" id = "myText" name = "myText" />
Passwords display just like textboxes, except rather than showing the text as it is typed, an asterisk appears for each letter. Note that the data is not encoded in any meaningful way. Typing text into a password field is still entirely unsecure.
<input type = "password" id = "myPWD" />
Radio buttons are used in a group. Only one element of a radio group can be selected at a time. Give all members of a radio group the same name value to indicate they are part of a group.
<input type = "radio" name = "radSize" value = "small" id = "radSmall" selected = "selected" /> <label for = "radSmall">Small</label> <input type = "radio" name = "radSize" value = "large" id = "radLarge" /> <label for = "radLarge">Large</label>
Attaching a label to a radio button means the user can activate the button by clicking on the corresponding label. For best results, use the selected attribute to force one radio button to be the default.
Checkboxes are much like radio buttons, but they are independent. Like radio buttons, they can be associated with a label.
<input type = "checkbox" id = "chkFries" /> <label for = "chkFries">Would you like fries with that?</label>
Hidden fields hold data that is not visible to the user (although it is still visible in the code) It is primarily used to preserve state in server-side programs.
<input type = "hidden" name = "txtHidden" value = "recipe for secret sauce" />
Note that the data is still not protected in any meaningful way.
Buttons are used to signal user input. Buttons can be created through the input tag:
<input type = "button" value = "launch the missiles" onclick = "launchMissiles()" />
This will create a button with the caption “launch the missiles.” When the button is clicked, the page will attempt to run a JavaScript function called “launchMissiles()”Standard buttons are usually used with JavaScript code on the client. The same button can also be created with this alternate format:
<button type = "button" Onclick = "launchMissiles()"> Launch the missiles </button>
This second form is preferred because buttons often require different CSS styles than other input elements. This second form also allows an <img> tag to be placed inside the button, making the image act as the button.
The reset button automatically resets all elements in its form to their default values. It doesn’t require any other attributes.
<input type = "reset" /> <button type = "reset""> Reset </button>
Drop-down lists can be created through the select / option mechanism. The select tag creates the overall structure, which is populated by option elements.
<select id = "selColor"> <option value = "#000000">black</option> <option value = "#FF0000">red</option> <option value = "#FFFFFF">white</option> </select>
The select has an id (for client-side code) or name (for serverside code) identifier. It contains a number of options. Each option has a value which will be returned to the program. The text between <option> and </option> is the value displayed to the user. In some cases (as in this example) the value displayed to the user is not the same as the value used by programs.
You can also create a multi-line selection with the select and option tags:
<select id = "selColor" size = "3" multiple = "multiple"> <option value = "#000000">black</option> <option value = "#FF0000">red</option> <option value = "#FFFFFF">white</option> </select>
Certain tags common in older forms of HTML are no longer recommended as CSS provides much better alternatives.
The font tag was used to set font color, family (typeface) and size. Numerous CSS attributes replace this capability with much more flexible alternatives. See the CSS refcard for details.
HTML code should indicate the level of emphasis rather than the particular stylistic implications. Italicizing should be done through CSS. The <em> tag represents emphasized text. It produces italic output unless the style is changed to something else. The <i> tag is no longer necessary and is not recommended. Add font-style: italic to the style of any element that should be italicized.
Like italics, boldfacing is considered a style consideration. Use the <strong> tag to denote any text that should be strongly emphasized. By default, this will result in boldfacing the enclosed text. You can add bold emphasis to any style with the font-weight: bold attribute in CSS.
In addition to the deprecated tags, there are also techniques which were once common in HTML that are no longer recommended.
Frames have been used as a layout mechanism and as a technique for keeping one part of the page static while dynamically loading other parts of the page in separate frames. Use of frames has proven to cause major usability problems. Layout is better handled through CSS techniques, and dynamic page generation is frequently performed through server-side manipulation or AJAX.
Before CSS became widespread, HTML did not have adequate page formatting support. Clever designers used tables to provide an adequate form of page layout. CSS provides a much more flexible and powerful form of layout than tables, and keeps the HTML code largely separated from the styling markup.
Sometimes you need to display a special character in a web page. HTML has a set of special characters for exactly this purpose. Each of these entities begins with the ampersand(&) followed by a code and a semicolon.
Character | Name | Code | Note |
Non-breaking space | | Adds white space | |
< | Less than | < | Used to display HTML code or mathematics |
> | Greater than | > | Used to display HTML code or mathematics |
& | Ampersand | & | If you’re not displaying an entity but really want the & symbol |
© | Copyright | © | Copyright symbol |
® | Registered trademark | ® | Registered trademark |
Numerous other HTML entities are available and can be found in online resources like w3schools.
New technologies are on the horizon. Most of the updated browsers now has support for significant new HTML 5 features, and CSS 3 is not far behind. While the following should still be considered experimental, they are likely to become very important tools in the next few years. Firefox 5+, Safari 4+, Chrome 5+, Opera 7+ (and a few other recent browsers) support the following new features:
Finally the browsers have direct support for audio and video without plugin technology. These tags work much like the img tag.
<video src = "myVideo.ogg" autoplay> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <audio src = "myAudio.ogg" controls> Your browsers does not support the audio tag </audio>
The HTML 5 standard currently supports Ogg Theora video, Ogg Vorbis audio, and wav audio. The Ogg formats are opensource alternatives to proprietary formats, and plenty of free tools convert from more standard video formats to Ogg. The autoplay option causes the element to play automatically. The controls element places controls directly into the page.
The code between the beginning and ending tag will execute if the browser cannot process the audio or video tag. You can place alternate code here for embedding alternate versions (Flash, for example)
The canvas tag offers a region of the page that can be drawn upon (usually with Javascript.) This creates the possibility of real interactive graphics without requiring plugins like Flash.
This is actually a CSS improvement, but it’s much needed. It allows you to define a font-face in CSS and include a ttf font file from the server. You can then use this font face in your ordinary CSS and use the downloaded font. If this becomes a standard, we will finally have access to reliable downloadable fonts on the web, which will usher in web typography at long last.
Posted by: Dhiraj kumar
As Cascading Style Sheets mature as a language of design and a tool of Web site and application management, a deep understanding of how the language really works is essential. However, most people have learned CSS the same way they’ve learned HTML,by viewing source, copying template codes, reading books and articles. While this “bootstrap” method of learning is often the best way to find great techniques, it may not be the best for knowing how to manage, debug, customize and even advance those techniques.
What our training hasn’t necessarily provided are the core concepts within CSS. This is why the Core CSS series may contain simple examples of things you already know. You’ll just get to know them better here! In this foundational reference card, you’ll find not only a bit of history and rationale for use, rule structure and syntax, but also a thorough resource as to the Cascade, inheritance and specificity,core principles of CSS that will expand and strengthen your professional ability to work with CSS.
The idea behind CSS is not a new one. We’ve seen the separation of presentation before in desktop publishing, where master style sheets can be created to control the layout, typefaces and colors used in a given design. Cascading Style Sheets were conceived to do exactly that: Remove the style from the document and place it separately from the code to be styled.
The benefits, when used carefully, can be outstanding. Some benefits of using style sheets include:
The first proposal for CSS was made by Håkon Wium Lie, now CTO of Opera Software. He worked with Bert Bos to co-author the first CSS specification, which believe it or not, became a recommendation in 1996! By 1998 CSS 2.0 brought us richer options, as we find later in advancing versions CSS 2.1 and CSS 3.0.
Version | Date | Implementations |
---|---|---|
CSS 1.0 | First proposed 1994, First specification in 1996 | Still flawed CSS 1 portions in all CSS browsers |
CSS 2.0 | 1998 | No full implementation |
CSS 2.1 | Not yet published as a complete specification | Some close to complete implementations |
CSS 3.0 (Modular) | Certain modules are ahead of others in development | Some CSS 3.0 features are implemented in versions of WebKit, Mozilla and Opera browsers |
Posted by: Dhiraj kumar