cssvault - inspiring creativity

Tired of writing boring XHTML and CSS code at the beginning of every slicing project? The XHTML / CSS Markup Generator is a web based tool that allows users to enter very intuitive, shortened syntax in order to generate corresponding XHTML and CSS markup, speeding up your work.

Sample input looks something like this:

#root
 #top
  #logo
   a[href="/"]=Markup Generator
  form#search
   fieldset
    label[for="query"]=Enter keyword:
    input[type="text" name="term"]#query
    button[type="submit"]=Find
 #header
  h1=Markup Generator
  h2=Nifty tool for XHTML/CSS coders
 #content
  #primary
   #about
  #secondary
   #contact.box
   #notify.box
   #bookmarks.box
 #footer
  p=Copyright (c) 2008 xMS.pl

This will result in the following XHTML and CSS code:

(XHTML):

<div id="root">
    <div id="top">
        <div id="logo">
            <a href="/">Markup Generator</a>
        </div>
        <form id="search" method="post" action="./">
            <fieldset>
                <label for="query">Enter keyword:</label>
                <input id="query" type="text" name="term" />
                <button type="submit">Find</button>
            </fieldset>
        </form>
    </div>
    <div id="header">
        <h1>Markup Generator</h1>
        <h2>Nifty tool for XHTML/CSS coders</h2>
    </div>
    <div id="content">
        <div id="primary">
            <div id="about"></div>
        </div>
        <div id="secondary">
            <div id="contact" class="box"></div>
            <div id="notify" class="box"></div>
            <div id="bookmarks" class="box"></div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div id="footer">
        <p>Copyright (c) 2008 xMS.pl</p>
    </div>
</div>

(CSS):

#root {  }
 #top {  }
  #logo {  }
   #logo a {  }
  #search {  }
   #search fieldset {  }
    #search fieldset label {  }
    #query {  }
    #search fieldset button {  }
 #header {  }
  #header h1 {  }
  #header h2 {  }
 #content {  }
  #primary {  }
   #about {  }
  #secondary {  }
   #contact {  }
   #notify {  }
   #bookmarks {  }
 #footer {  }
  #footer p {  }

CSS Type Set is an online application created to assist beginner CSS developers with the task of font styling. It features an AJAX-powered interface that automagically updates the preview pane in real time. The resulting CSS syntax can then be copied and pasted into a CSS file. Give it a try!

GlassBox is a JavaScript library that allows you to add Windows Vista-like transparent effects on your website. It runs on top of the the Prototype and Script.aculo.us library and comes complete with an API documentation and tons of examples. It is released under the MIT license.

IzzyMenu is a free web-based tool for creating snazzy looking CSS menus with minimal effort.

Check it out!

iBegin has just released iBox, a “lightweight, fast, and flexible” lightbox script.

It supports the following content types:

Images
It supports image overlaying and will automatically scale down the window if the browser’s viewpane is too small.

Documents
Displays linked documents in a similar fashion as Images.

Inline Containers
iBox can also display containers (e.g. hidden DIVs) within the same page.

YouTube Videos (Flash Video)
iBox’s architecture supports plugins. Images, Documents, and Inline Containers are all plugins, and YouTube Videos is provided as an example for developers to make their own plugins.

One notable aspect of iBox is its support for non-JavaScript capable browsers. It supports a target attribute which specifies the target document to be loaded, so that you can specify a different value for the HREF attribute. Very nifty.

Links:

• iBox Homepage
• iBox Support Forum
• iBegin Labs

While surfing around today day I landed on FitFlash, a JavaScript solution to resize Flash animations “… to 100% width and 100% height when your browser window is greater than the minimum desired size and resizes flash to the minimum desired size when the browser window is smaller…”

FitFlash is a smart script that resizes your flash automatically if your browser window size is smaller or greater than your flash minimum desired size keeping it accessible independent of screen resolution.

It works seamlessly with SWFObject, which is great.

Daniel Ott has come up with a handy tool for converting pixels to EMs. Forget about using the headaches of manually using a calculator and doing all the math. This bookmarklet can take care of it and will it will also calculate the pixel to em value relative to a specific element.

Here is the bookmarklet:

Thank you, Daniel Ott for this very useful tool!

The Google Chart API allows you to easily create dynamic, professional-looking image (PNG format) charts with very little programming. Data can be encoded to provide up to 62 (with simple encoding), 1,000 (with text encoding), or 4096 (with extended encoding) different values.

Choose from a variety of charting styles including:

Line chars

Bar charts

Pie charts (2D and 3D styles available)

Venn diagrams

and

Scatter plots

Not only is the chart API is free to use, the best part is that it doesn’t come with advertisements. No, not even a Google logo gets embedded in the chart, though as far as I know this is the first of its kind to offer such a service, so there is really nothing out there to compare it to. So why are they offering such a great service — one that obviously consumes a lot of bandwidth — for free? I’m not part of Google, but I’m sure this is part of their grand scheme of taking over the world. In a good way, of course.

Shadowbox is a lightbox-style multimedia viewer inspired by LightWindow. This includes images, Flash videos, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, and even webpages.

From the website:

Shadowbox is a cross-browser, cross-platform, cleanly-coded and fully-documented media viewer application written entirely in JavaScript. Using Shadowbox, website authors can display pictures and movies in all major browsers without navigating away from the linking page.

Aside from support for Firefox 1.5+, Safari 2+ and IE 6+, it comes with adapters for most widely adapted JavaScript frameworks, allowing for easy integration and optimized code execution.

• Yahoo! User Interface Library
• Ext (standalone)
• Prototype + Scriptaculous
• jQuery
• MooTools (requires Fx.Styles and its dependancies)
• Dojo Toolkit (thanks Peter Higgins)

Lightview is an AJAX image viewer similar to the ever so famous Lightbox JS. It features very nice, PNG-less, customizable rounded corners, a slideshow mode, pulsing captions, and a very clean and smooth blackout animation and slideshow transition.

One thing that I really like about Lightview is that the image remains stationary when scrolling unlike in Lightbox where the image scrolls with the content.

Still, the script was implemented on Scriptaculous and Prototype, which, given the size of these things may not be the way to go for sites optimized for speed. For those looking for a lighter lightbox alternative, Slimbox may be the better choice.