CSS3

As well as all the new CSS features we mentioned previously, Firefox 3.6* is gaining a brand new property value: image-rect. This allows you to clip an area of a background image to display only part of the whole.

It uses Mozilla’s proprietary prefix, and takes two values: a URI for the image, and the boundaries of the clipped area (as four comma separated values, like the clip property):

The CSS 3 news never really gets too quiet out there, I think that more coders and designers than ever have their heads down and hands dirty in CSS 3. How do I know? Well more tutorials and examples are being made all the time and more and more mentions are popping up on the various design and development blogs. Are your hands dirty enough? I know mine weren’t so I set out to see what’s new in for this summer as it draws to a close.

Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1, codenamed Namoroka (after the Namoroka National Park in Madagascar), was released as a nightly download yesterday on the 7th August 2009.

This latest developer test version of the popular browser, based on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform,  offers increased support for CSS3, most notably background-size, CSS gradients, multiple background images along with support for the rem unit from the CSS3 values and units module.

The W3C have released an updated working draft of the CSSOM View Module, edited by Anne van Kesteren.

Many of the features defined in the CSSOM View Module have been supported by most browsers for a long period of time, with many tracing their routes back to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The goal of this specification is therefore not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to define these features in such a way that they can be implemented by all browsers in an identical way.

Chris Hanscom over at Veign.com has been busy this week bringing his CSS3 Quick Reference Guide up to date in line with the latest CSS3 specifications.

The W3C today announced the release of two new working drafts; the flexible box layout module and images values module.

Simon Fraser announces support for CSS 3D Transforms, on Mac OSX Leopard, in the latest Webkit nightlies.

Perhaps foreshadowed by Google’s adoption of HTML 5, Jeffrey Zeldman pointed out late last week; the future of XHTML 2 is no more. Obviously the selectors we use in CSS 3 depend on the underlying markup we work with, so this news is very interesting and we think timely. As CSS 3 support inches forward with each browser release and as JavaScript libraries supplement poor browser behavior, the need for web developers and enthusiasts to be able to focus their attention has become a paramount concern.

Earlier this year we asked if you still want more out of CSS 3 and we found that you did. Of late, we are seeing the dialogue rekindled time and again with great posts being written on other major blogs. Smashing Magazine contributor Inayaili de Leon provides code samples and insight on: using browser-specific properties, selectors, RBGA and opacity, multi-column layouts, multiple backgrounds, word wrap, text shadow. @font-face attribute, border radius, border image, box shadow and more. Definitely great work by de Leon, that also earned a mention from ajaxian. So check out the post and enjoy! Well done Inayaili!

If you want to get a taste of using the CSS 3 Template Layout module, Alex Deveria has written a jQuery plugin which implements the syntax.

I haven’t had the opportunity to try it out yet, so let me know how you get on.