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Here is a fun technique to add shading to your web pages using only
CSS with PNG images, without using JavaScript, Flash, server-side
scripting, or Photoshop, and remain totally independent from colors and
textures.
Try it demo. Download the source
Background
Most shading techniques suffer the drawback of the core technology they use:
- Photoshop: images must be individually styled for each pattern combination
- Javascript: CPU intensive
The main issue with Photoshop techniques comes from the time spent
creating images, and from the complexity of the code to keep tack of
them. For each color/teture combination, 8 images (4 corners and 4
edges) are required.
One technique called �sliding door� reduces these elements to 6, but requires larger images:
A new approach
Our technique is based on the same basic idea used in 3D rendering
engines which separate textures from shading. Here is an example showing
the difference between shades + textures, and shades only:
The first step is to create the shade PND images. Simply use a mask to hide the box content (see the included files):
To optimize this technique, we can reduce the top and bottom
elements� width, and the left and right elements� height to one pixel.
To use on a web page, we simply create a box element normally, wrap it in a �shade� container and add the required elements.
For the most complex case:
<div class='shade'>
<div class='box'>
<!-- content -->
</div>
<div class='TL' />
<div class='T' />
<div class='TR' />
<div class='L' />
<div class='C' />
<div class='R' />
<div class='BL' />
<div class='B' />
<div class='BR' />
</div>
For fixed-with boxes, such as page containers, we only require 3 elements (top, center, and bottom):
<div class='shade'>
<div class='box'>
<!-- content -->
</div>
<div class='T' />
<div class='C' />
<div class='B' />
</div>
Likewise, fixed-height boxed such as title containers only require 3 elements (left, center, and right):
<div class='shade'>
<div class='box'>
<!-- content -->
</div>
<div class='L' />
<div class='C' />
<div class='R' />
</div>
You do not have to create the shade element, you can just apply the
shade class to an existing one. The only purpose of the shade element is
to serve as a wrapper and an anchor for absolute positioning.
Fore each shading element, we define a negative margin (here 10 px)
to accommodate the shade and use a negative z-positioning to place the
shade below the content of the box.
.shade {
position:relative;
}
.shade .TL, .shade .T, .shade .TR,
.shade .L, .shade .C, .shade .R,
.shade .BL, .shade .B, .shade .TB {
position:absolute;
z-index: -1;
top:-10px;
left:-10px;
right:-10px;
bottom:-10px;
}
.shade .TL {
background: url(s/tl.png) no-repeat left top;
}
...
As always, the best way to fully understand a technique is to look at a demo, or to download the source. Next time, we will look at a Drupal theme which implements this technique.
Cheers!
JF
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