Skip to main content

CSS Back to basics: Here comes TRBL

So I guess CSS is not obvious to everyone. One of my coworkers asked today why you sometimes had 1 value after a "padding" attribute and sometimes you had 2 or 4 values.

Basically,


padding: 5px;

Puts a 5 pixel padding on an element.


padding: 5px 3px;

Means you have 5 pixels of padding on the top and bottom and 3 pixels on the sides


padding: 3px 4px 5px 10px;

Means you have 3 pixels of padding on top, 4 on the right, 5 on the bottom and 10 on the left.

A good way to remember this is the acronym TRBL (like "trouble").

The same applies to "margin".

As well as this, you also have extra attributes which can specify the top, bottom, right and left paddings on their own

i.e.

padding-left: 10px;


Sometimes, if only one side is unique, it's better to refer to it in the following way (for readability).


padding:5px;
padding-left: 10px;

The "padding-left" of 10px will override the "padding" of 5px, but only on the left side of the element.


padding: 5px 5px 5px 10px;

The above does the same, but is less readable in my opinion.

Comments

It took me awhile to grasp the CSS basics and the meaning behind each script line. I advise on understanding them line by line on how they affect one another.
seo reseller said…
It's always good to know the basics. CSS can be a complicated one if you don't have any background about it. This is very important in starting a blog or website because CSS is a part of SEO strategy and techniques.
This simple tutorial clarified the things about the usage of 1 or more values on CSS. CSS basics are important to make a meaningful, compelling and eye-catching web design.
Anonymous said…
Learning the basics of CSS is really not that easy. You have to understand it line by line and how they function with one another. But it will be all worth it if you master it.
seo services said…
I agree with the comments. It is indeed important to have a full grasp of the basic and fundamental concepts to ensure its functionality. A simple dot or comma can affect the entire picture of the design.
I'm impressed. You're truly well informed and very intelligent. You wrote something that people could understand and made the subject intriguing for everyone. I'm saving this for future use.

Popular posts from this blog

Master of my domain

Hi All, I just got myself a new domain ( http://www.skuunk.com ). The reason is that Blogspot.com is offering cheap domain via GoDaddy.com and I thought after having this nickname for nigh on 10 years it was time to buy the domain before someone else did (also I read somewhere that using blogspot.com in your domain is the equivalent of an aol.com or hotmail.com email address...shudder...). Of course I forgot that I would have to re-register my blog everywhere (which is taking ages) not to mention set up all my stats stuff again. *sigh*. It's a blogger's life... In any case, don't forget to bookmark the new address and to vote me up on Technorati !

Responsive Web Design

I wanted to go over Responsive Web Design using CSS. In the old days of web development, we had to code to common screen sizes (i.e. 800 X 600, 1024 X 768) and we patiently waited for people to upgrade their computers to have a decent amount of screen real estate so we could design things the way we really wanted. We also took on semi stretchy web layouts etc to expand and contract appropriately. Then about 2 or 3 years ago, Apple released this little device called an iPhone with a 320 X 480 resolution which took the world by storm and suddenly a lot of people were viewing your website on a tiny screen again... Anyways, as it can be difficult to design a site which looks good on 320 X 480 AND 1680 X 1050, we need to come up with some kind of solution. One way is to sniff the client and then use an appropriate stylesheet, but then you are mixing CSS with either JavaScript or server side programming and also potentially maintaining a list of appropriate clients and stylesheets. Also, you

jQuery: When does a library become a language?

jQuery is a great JavaScript library which allows web developers to write cross platform code, but some of its syntax looks like it is based more on Ruby than JavaScript. When does a library become a language? So first of all, what is the difference betwen a programming library and a programming language? A programming language is a means by which we (as humans) can give instructions to a computer to get it to do various tasks (algorithms, computations, etc...). They are largely artificial constructs created for human readability which then need to be compiled or interpreted into actual instructions which the computer can then carry out. A compiler turns a program into machine readable instructions ahead of time (compile time) where as an interpreter does so on the fly (runtime). Languages such as C and Java are generally compiled and JavaScript, Perl and Ruby are generally interpreted. While there is no real reason why this has to be the case, these factors normally affect the syntax