Image Adjustment with CSS Filter Effects

Adjusting image Brightness and Contrast, or turning image into Grayscale or Sephia is a common feature you may find in image editing application, like Photoshop. But, it is now possible to add the same effects to web images using CSS.
This capability comes from the Filter Effects which actually is still in the Working Draft stage. However, the Webkit browser seems to be a step a head in implementing this feature.
So, let’s give it a try and we will use this image from Mehdi Kh to demonstrating the effects.

The Effects

Applying the effects is very easy. Take a look at the snippet below, for turning images into grayscale;

img {
  -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%);
}

How To Convert Old CSS To LESS

 

Using a Tool

With increasing popularity of CSS preprocessor, some new tools and apps that essentially aim to makea web designer’s or developer’s life easier, such as this tool: CSS2Less.
This tool allows us to convert regular CSS into LESS. So, let’s give it a try. I have the following CSS rules from my old file to be converted.

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1. nav {  
2.     height: 40px;  
3.     width: 100%;  
4.     background: #000;  
5.     border-bottom: 2px solid #fff;  
6. }  
7. nav ul {  
8.     padding: 0;  
9.     margin: 0 auto;  
10. }  
11. nav li {  
12.     display: inline;  
13.     float: left;  
14. }  
15. nav a {  
16.     color: #fff;  
17.     display: inline-block;  
18.     width: 100px;  
19.     text-shadow: 1px 1px 0px #000;  
20. }  
21. nav li a {  
22.     border-right: 1px solid #fff;  
23.     box-sizing:border-box;  
24. }  
25. nav li:last-child a {  
26.     border-right: 0;  
27. }  
28. nav a:hover, nav a:active {  
29.     background-color: #fff;  
30. }  

Here is the result.

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1. nav a:hover, nav a:active {  
2.     background-color: #fff;  
3. }  
4. nav {  
5.     height: 40px;  
6.     width: 100%;  
7.     background: #000;  
8.     border-bottom: 2px solid #fff;  
9.     a {  
10.         color: #fff;  
11.         display: inline-block;  
12.         width: 100px;  
13.         text-shadow: 1px 1px 0px #000;  
14.     }  
15.     ul {  
16.         padding: 0;  
17.         margin: 0 auto;  
18.     }  
19.     li:last-child {  
20.         a {  
21.             border-right: 0;  
22.         }  
23.     }  
24.     li {  
25.         display: inline;  
26.         float: left;  
27.         a {  
28.             border-right: 1px solid #fff;  
29.             box-sizing:border-box;  
30.         }  
31.     }  
32. }  

As we can see above, our old CSS is now nested like in LESS.

Limitation

However we can also see some limitations in the results of the conversion. In the old CSS, we have several same colors, such as in these two declarations border-bottom: 2px solid #fff; and border-right: 1px solid #fff; we have both borders in white. In LESS we can actually store this constant value in a Variable.
It also does not nest and separate the pseudo-* with an ampersand (&) symbol, such as in the following rules li:last-child and nav a:hover, nav a:active. They just remain as they are, where we can actually simplify the rulesets this way;

1. li {  
2.     &:first-child {  
3.   
4.     }  
5.     a {  
6.         &:hover {  
7.   
8.         }  
9.         &:active {  
10.   
11.         }  
12.     }  
13. }  

Conclusion

Despite the limitations it currently still has, this tool can quite helpful in saving our time for nesting CSS rulesets. We only need to do the rest manually; possibly until the the limitations above are resolved.

The Benefit of CSS

What is CSS?

CSS is a simple file which controls the visual appearance of a Web page without compromising its structure. Using CSS we can control our font size, font color, link color and many other attributes on our web page. This will make our HTML code much more readable and the page size will be reduced.

Why to use it and how to use it properly
If you don’t use CSS on your web pages and you have many tables and content on them, chances are that your HTML file size will be quite big. Fact is that we live in a busy world, and people are not will to wait more than 5 seconds web page to load.

From the other side some web developers implement the CSS on wrong way. They write their CSS in HTML code of the page, like this:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<style>
A
{
font-family: Verdana;
font-size:8pt;
color:black;
text-decoration:none
}
</style>

What is wrong with this technique? Well, imagine that you have site with more than 50 pages. One day, you decide that you want to change font color and colors of the links on your site. You will have to edit ALL the pages on your site, and do to that you will need time, because you place your CSS in your web page.

Better way is to save your visual attributes in separate, external CSS file, and to link that file with your page like this:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

Using this technique, you can change the look of your site within minutes, regardless of the number of pages, because your visual attributes are saved in ONE external CSS file. Edit that file, and you are done.

Benefits
Which are the benefits of using CSS? List is quite long and I will list here only the most important.

• Your web page will load faster
• Web page will become more search engine friendly
• You can change you site appearance within minutes
• You can write separate CSS file for handheld devices which will be called up instead of the regular CSS file
• You can forget about creating printer friendly version of your site using separate CSS file when user chooses to print the web page.

Avoiding standard HTML commands like:

<font color=”#0000ff”><font size=2>Product</font></font></font>

will help us to reduce file size, but that is not the only benefit. Using CSS word product in this example will be moved more close on the top of the document. Search engine will pick up more content and less code.

Imagine that you have 3 columns table on your page. When you see the code, you will notice that first come code for your table, and after that it come your content. Positioning your 3 columns using CSS instead of standard inline elements:

<table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="381" height="150" valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4">
My Product
</td>
<td height="150" valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4">

When CSS is used, your code might look like this:

<div id="leftcontent">
My Product
</div>

Again your code is much more clear, and your content is moved on the top of your document, making your HTML page search engine friendly, and reducing your file size.

Content is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization, and you will benefit with removing the unnecessary code in your HTML and create search engine friendly web page.

Validate it
Browser war is far behind us. Reality is that most of the people today use Internet Explorer, but you should try to be on safe side and ensure that your CSS code is valid. Not all browsers interpret the CSS on same way. You can validate your CSS here:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/