![]() So, I’ll walk you step-by-step through my personal starting point for projects. But, I find that certain techniques can improve the accessibility of pretty much every website I build. I won’t go into the more advanced areas of focus management or keyboard navigation with complex interactive interfaces. But, you may be wondering, “How do I actually set my project up for accessibility success?” Now, we’re going to go through specific tips for how to optimize a project for accessibility from the start.Īccessibility is, of course, too varied (and exciting) a field to comprehensively cover here. ![]() With a CSS pre-processor and/or a CSS framework, you can take your productivity (and your CSS style sheets) to a new level.In part 1 of this series, we learned about what accessibility is, why it’s important, and how developers can become advocates for it. And even if you prefer to use a code editor, you don’t have to write all the CSS code from scratch. You can use a visual website builder that generates it for you. If you want to give your HTML documents a different look, you have to do it with CSS code.īut here’s the thing that not everyone tells you: You don’t necessarily have to write this CSS code yourself. No, there is no alternative to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). They provide a solid template to build upon, are open source, and are maintained by a vibrant community of contributors.ĭon’t miss: How Much CSS Is *Too Much* CSS? In Conclusion These CSS frameworks can shave hours, days, weeks, and even months off large projects, especially if you’re working in a team. Instead of coding all of your CSS rules from scratch, you’re building on top of a standardized and documented code base. Many of the world’s most popular websites are based on Bootstrap or Foundation-and for good reason. The two most popular are Bootstrap, which positions itself as an “HTML, CSS, and JS library” these days, and Foundation. Think of CSS frameworks as templates that you can build on and adapt to your project’s needs. Learn more: The Difference Between CSS and SCSS, Explained CSS FrameworksĪ CSS framework is a collection of ready-made CSS rules and UI elements that you can use to build better websites faster. Less, on the other hand, is written in JavaScript and has better documentation, especially for beginners. Sass is written in Ruby and is generally the more powerful of the two. If you ever wished you could do more with CSS, you probably want to look into a language extension.īy far the two most popular CSS language extensions are Sass and Less. When it comes to styling HTML documents, CSS language extensions let you achieve more with less by adding new syntax and capabilities to the regular CSS specification. ![]() One of those options is a CSS language extension. Now that we’ve covered the designer-friendly options, let’s spend a minute or two talking about the programmer-friendly options. ![]() Of course, visual website builders have their pros and cons-and each of them takes a while to learn-but they’re the best alternative to writing CSS if you want to build websites without writing code. Thanks to web-based design tools like Webflow, Framer, and Bubble, you can create responsive websites and even web applications in your browser in a visual way, without having to edit a single line of HTML markup or CSS style sheets. Many years ago, these tools required you to install buggy software on your computer, and the websites you could create with them neither looked good nor had well-written (or should I say well-generated) code. The tool then generates a website with valid HTML markup and CSS stylesheets. Visual Website BuildersĪs the name suggests, a visual website builder is a tool that lets you design websites on a canvas instead of in a code editor. However, there are alternatives to having to write CSS code to design HTML documents-and those alternatives range from designer-friendly visual website builders to programmer-friendly CSS pre-processors and CSS frameworks. CSS is the only widely accepted stylesheet language, and the only one that’s supported by all web browsers. When it comes to styling HTML documents, there’s no real alternative to CSS stylesheets. Tell me if this sounds about right: you’re learning about web development and, for one reason or another, you’re wondering if there’s an alternative to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or not.
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