The DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) is a software development principle, which has been formulated by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas in their book The Pragmatic Programmer. The DRY code philosophy is stated as “Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.” A system’s knowledge is far broader than just its code. It refers to database schemas, test plans, the build system, even documentation. In simple words DRY principle is a software design theory that stresses the importance of not duplicating code.

Every software programmer these days uses a variety of design principles and design patterns in their day to day programming tasks. It helps them improve the quality, performance and maintainability of the software system by avoiding code redundancy.

DRY principle in CSS coding

Unlike software programming web design lacks formal principles or theories of its own. Knowing and understanding certain software principles can really benefit you as a web designer / developer. Here, by incorporating DRY principle in web design, especially in CSS coding can really enhance our web design experience.

Avoiding code duplication is one of the basic principles of CSS coding from the start. To write clean and optimized CSS code is the key to develop faster loading and less bandwidth-burning websites. In the case of a website with 50000 monthly hits, if you can save 5 KB by optimizing the CSS file, you will eventually save more than 2.5 GB bandwidth a year. The result can be really overwhelming for heavy traffic generating websites. Read the rest of this entry »

To be able to effectively handle the alpha transparency or opacity of a particular element purely using CSS/HTML was the dream of any web designer. Because, with alpha transparency or opacity they can make visually more beautiful and easily maintainable websites with less effort. Now with CSS3 we can achieve these using properties such as RGBa and Opacity.

What is RGBa?

In addition to RGB (Red Blue Green) CSS3 has introduced a new feature to color setting, which is called RGBA. RGBA stands for Red Blue Green Alpha. Here “A” in this property name stands for “Alpha”. This additional feature can be used to specify an opacity value for any color. The alpha channel is usually used as an opacity channel. If a pixel has 0% value in its alpha channel, it’s fully transparent (and, thus, invisible), whereas a value of 100% in the alpha channel gives a fully opaque pixel. We can use this for anything that can take the CSS color property.


Sample CSS Code:

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P { background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.5); }

We can use RGBA now on all new-generation browsers including Firefox 3, Chrome, Safari, and Opera 10, but we won’t see the effect in Internet Explorer.

Live Preview (Screenshot for older browsers)

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Personally, I have never celebrated valentine’s day in my life, in-fact I am completely against the idea of reserving days for our dear ones. Be it valentine’s day, Mother’s day or Friendship day, I just can’t understand the logic of waiting for a particular day to celebrate love or express gratitude for my loved ones. My affection will always be there and my dear ones will know it all the time. Besides, at least in India Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a marketing gimmick, it is hyped by marketing folks to sell their products.

Similarly I am also gonna use this day for the first time just to market my blog

Here in this day I am expressing here, my whole hearted love and affection towards such a wonderful web tool called CSS. That too in a different way, with a Pure CSS Valenties Day Card.

This Valentine’s Day Card is designed purely using CSS & HTML. No images, fonts or symbols here, simply CSS with plain DIVs and Classes, even the text ‘I LOVE CSS’. Go ahead and check…

Browser Compatibility: I have checked it in Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 4.0 and it’s working fine in both the browsers. There are some rendering issues in IE-7 and Opera 9.02. I am not sure about Safari.

CSS Heart – LIVE PREVIEW

Sample HTML Code

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<div id="container">
	<div class="hrt-lft"></div>
	<div class="hrt-rgt"></div>
	<div class="bot"></div>
 
	<div class="arw1"></div>
	<div class="arw2"></div>
	<div class="pointer"></div>
	<div class="pointer2"></div>
	<div class="pointer3"></div>
 
	<div class="shade1"></div>
	<div class="shade2"></div>
	<div class="shade4"></div>
	<div class="shade5"></div>
 
	<div class="msg-holder">
		<div class="i"></div>
		<div class="l">
			<div></div>
		</div>
		<div class="o">
			<div></div>
		</div>
		<div class="v"></div>
		<div class="v2"></div>
		<div class="v3"></div>
		<div class="e">
			<div class="e2"></div>
			<div class="e3"></div>
		</div>
		<div class="c">
			<div></div>
		</div>
		<div class="s">
			<div class="s2"></div>
			<div class="s3"></div>
		</div>
		<div class="ss">
			<div class="ss2"></div>
			<div class="ss3"></div>
		</div>
	</div>
</div>

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