Making the most of CSS
I’m always on the lookout for new ways to tweak CSS for design purposes. The more you can rely on CSS to drive layout, versus images, tables, etc. the faster your site is going to load and the more you’ll distinguish your site from others.
Mandarin Design is one such site that is pushing the CSS envelope. An exploration of their site reveals a whole shebang of excellent tips, tricks, design ideas and style guidelines. I haven’t come close to checking everything out, but here are a couple of notable articles:
1. Easy CSS Pull Quotes
2. CSS Poloroid Picture Borders
Keep in mind many of the tricks used on this site are not necessarily cross-browser compatible, particularly the image filtering tricks. However, for great text techniques and layout techniques, they offer some really clean, creative and easy ideas to take your web site or blog up a notch.