Tuesday Tips | Everything That is Possible with CSS

Today is April 14, 2020, and for this Tuesday Tips episode we're
covering Amazing Pure CSS Creations


Let's dive in!


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CSS is one of the first languages that budding web designers
learn. This is probably because the tangible results are easier
and quicker to achieve than other languages. However, CSS can be
used for so much more than changing a few background colors or
positioning elements on the page. Modern day CSS has been used
for some amazing creations that we never would have believed
possible only a few years ago.


Recently, CSS has been used to create some astounding products in
art and animation. These creations range from a realistic
painting made entirely out of CSS to 3D animated shapes and
objects, like an X-Wing from Star Wars. With newer features and
properties we can transform from using CSS as a design language
to a developer language.


The next logical step is to build games with pure CSS. What once
required JavaScript now can be done in with CSS, although it
tends to take a lot of lines of CSS instead of a few JavaScript
functions. Most games have been reminiscent of the games we have
from the early 2000s like digital tic tac toe or even Mario Kart.


Perhaps one of the biggest pure CSS creations is a search engine.
Search engines are one of the most complex features on the
internet with thousands of lines of JavaScript plus databases and
other components. However, Algolia was able to create a primitive
search engine with pure CSS. Although you can’t expect it to
search the web, it does a nice job of sorting through the
predetermined results and filtering categories.


Again, it would be very simple to code with a few lines of
JavaScript but it is really neat to see what can be accomplished
with CSS. Each year we are breaking the limits of what we thought
was possible with CSS. As new properties are added and people
come up with creative utilizations of old and new features we are
able to push the limits of what is possible.


Even using CSS in JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular is
helping to progress the language. The biggest inhibitor is legacy
browsers that are not supporting certain properties. However,
we’ve seen a growing need to unify the web and companies are
starting to remove support for legacy browsers in favor of modern
ones.


With new properties like CSS Grid and additional pseudo classes
the future of CSS is looking very bright!


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choice. That's all for today, tune in tomorrow!