+++
date = 2019-01-07
title = "Useful CSS Snippets"
description = "Explore some useful CSS snippets."
+++
# Introduction to CSS
[CSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS), the language used to markup
HTML code and make it "pretty", is one of the most effective ways to
increase the attractiveness of a website. It can also lead to increased
user engagement, retention, and satisfaction. In fact, there are whole
career fields are dedicated to the improvement of user experiences,
known as UI design and UX design.
Some web developers are used to the common CSS properties, such as
element sizing, fonts, colors, etc., but are not as well versed in
less-used properties and values such as `flexbox`,
`clip-path`, and `transform`. This article will
provide some insight into the less-used and unique CSS properties.
# CSS Variables
The first topic today is CSS variables. Variables are not often used by
smaller developers. CSS variables allow you to give your website a
well-defined structure, where you can easily reuse CSS properties
throughout the project.
You can use variables to define things, such as color palettes. Then,
you can use these colors for backgrounds anywhere else in the HTML. This
could be extended, where extra variables could be defined for
`primary-text`, `quoted-text`, etc. Variables can
also be used to define spacing (e.g. `32px` or
`2rem`), which can then be applied to margins, padding, font
sizes, and more.
For example, here are some variables defined at the root of the website,
which allows for any subsequent CSS rules to use those variables:
```css
:root {
--primary-color: black;
--secondary-color: white;
}
body {
background-color: var(--primary-color);
color: var(--secondary-color);
}
```
# CSS Box Shadows
Box shadows were once my mortal enemy. No matter how hard I tried, I
just couldn't get them to work how I wanted. Because of this, my
favorite discovery has been CSSMatic's [box shadow
generator](https://www.cssmatic.com/box-shadow). It provides an
excellent tool to generate box shadows using their simple sliders.
Surprisingly, this is the reason I learned how box shadows work! You can
use the sliders and watch how the CSS code changes in the image that is
displayed. Through this, you should understand that the basic structure
for box shadows is:
```css
box-shadow: inset horizontal vertical blur spread color;
```
Now, let's look at some basic examples! You can copy and paste the
following code into a site like CodePen or your own HTML files. Feel
free to play around with the code, experiment, and learn.
****Box Shadow #1****
```html
```
```css
.box h3 {
text-align: center;
position: relative;
top: 80px;
}
.box {
width: 70%;
height: 200px;
background: #fff;
margin: 40px auto;
}
.effect1 {
box-shadow: 0 10px 6px -6px #777;
}
```
****Box Shadow #2****
```html
```
```css
.box h3 {
text-align: center;
position: relative;
top: 80px;
}
.box {
width: 70%;
height: 200px;
background: #fff;
margin: 40px auto;
}
.effect2 {
box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px -5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.75);
}
```
Try these box shadows out on your own and see how changing each shadow
value works.
# CSS Flexbox
Now, let's move on to the best part of this article: flexbox. The
flexbox is by far my favorite new toy. I originally stumbled across this
solution after looking for more efficient ways of centering content
horizontally AND vertically. I had used a few hack-ish methods before,
but flexbox throws those out the window. The best part of it all is that
flexbox is *dead simple*.
Flexbox pertains to the parent div of any element. You want the parent
to be the flexbox in which items are arranged to use the flex methods.
It's easier to see this in action that explained, so let's see an
example.
****Flexbox****
```html
```
```css
.flex-examples {
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
justify-content: flex-start;
align-items: center;
padding: 10px;
background-color: #f2f2f2;
}
.sm-box {
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
align-items: center;
width: 20%;
height: 100px;
background: #fff;
margin: 40px 10px;
}
```
You may notice that we no longer need to use the `top`
property for the `h3` elements in our code. This is because
we set the display box to be a flex container for the small boxes, AND
we made the small boxes flex containers for their elements (the h3
tags). Flex boxes can be nested like this to center content that is
inside centered content.
For the example above, we designated the `justify-content`
property to be `flex-start` so that the boxes stack from the
left side of the screen. This property can be changed to
`center` to make the boxes appear in the center of the
screen.
For an interactive example, [check out this
CodePen](https://codepen.io/LandonSchropp/pen/KpzzGo) from
[LandonScropp](https://codepen.io/LandonSchropp/). Resize the window
with dice to see how they collapse and re-align.
# Even More CSS
For more inspiration, you can visit [CodePen](https://www.codepen.io),
[Dribbble](https://dribbble.com), or [UI
Movement](https://uimovement.com) to browse the collections of many
amazing web designers.