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The Elements of Style Sheets aims to categorize CSS properties into three elements: Nature, Theme, and Layout. It could help a front-end designer’s mental model of building the CSS on top of HTML.

Nature

Nature refers to the individual characteristics of an element.

• Display (display)
• Dimensions (padding, width, height)

Theme

Theme refers to the visual design of an element.

• Colors (color, background-color)
• Typography (font-size, font-family)
• Decor (border, border-radius, box-shadow)

Layout

Layout refers to the relationship of elements with one another.

• Position (float, position)
• Spacing (margin)

Update

Animation

As an example, after building the Content Structure in HTML, the front-end designer, in a mobile-first approach, will focus on styling individual elements – by their Nature first (usually, width is set at 100%). And then style according to Theme and lastly, as the viewport goes wider, the front-end designer styles the Layout.

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Elements of Style(sheets) V1

In general, label and icon combination is helpful in making an action easier to remember and depict.

Take a look at the left menu of this WordPress Dashboard:

And when there are no icons:

Without icons, you would need to read the labels one by one until you see what you’re looking for. The icons beside the labels definitely ease the effort in reading and recognizing the actions.

The Content Structure

How do we design the label and icon combination? First question we have to ask: with only HTML, is it important to represent the icon? For example, should it be contained in img, span, or a special character (think: icon fonts)?

If your answer is the same as mine, which is: only the text label is important enough to be represented in HTML, then we could simply use a to contain the label; the icon would be displayed using background-image.

Let’s use “Settings” for example:

[codepen_embed height=”102″ theme_id=”1820″ slug_hash=”EawKOb” default_tab=”result” user=”BrianSahagun”]See the Pen Label and Icon Combo by Brian Dys Sahagun (@BrianSahagun) on CodePen.[/codepen_embed]

The icon was attached using the pseudo-element ::after.

[css]
.settings-action-link::after {
content: ”;
position: absolute;
width: 1rem;
height: 1rem;
background-image: url( ‘../img/icon.png’ );
}
[/css]

The HTML Anchor Element <a> should also stand for “action” since its use is very powerful from being a simple hyperlink to being an element that performs a specific action. Think icons in web apps that are <a> underneath the HTML markup.

Link Padding on Actions

You might have a 16×16 px icon for a toolbar action item – but is 16×16 px active area enough to be properly activated? Perhaps for a desktop device with a mouse and pointer. But for touch devices, we must ensure that our action elements are comfortable enough for the average human fingers or thumbs. This goes without saying that bigger active areas are easier to point at and activate than small ones.

The recommended size of active areas (or hit targets) for iOS is 44×44 px and 48×48 px for Android. This ensures that users could comfortably tap or click on active elements such as icons, lists, and buttons.

Increasing the Active Area Thru Padding</h3

Now, padding doesn't literally mean CSS padding – although we could also achieve it that way. For our examples below, we will set the active area of a 16×16 px icon to 48px thru the width and height CSS properties.

[codepen_embed height=”638″ theme_id=”1820″ slug_hash=”zxdPBJ” default_tab=”result” user=”BrianSahagun”]See the Pen Action Padding by Brian Dys Sahagun (@BrianSahagun) on CodePen.[/codepen_embed]

Example 0 – Without Padding

This example shows if you have a small icon and you simply leave it as is. The active area is small enough to target/activate.

Example 1 – With Active Area of 48px

We increased the size of the <a> element to 48×48 px thru width and height CSS properties. As you can see if you hover your mouse, the active area is bigger and easier to target/activate.

Example 2 – 16px Sprite Image with Active Area of 48px

This example shows the icons having sizes of 16px and active areas of 48px.

Example 3 – 48px Single Image Resized to 16px Thru CSS with Active Area of 48px

The benefits of having a larger image (48px) which will be used as a smaller image (16px) are:

• you can resize it later to a bigger image (but not bigger than its original size) without losing quality (see Example 5)
• the icon can accommodate hi-res displays – meaning it won’t show pixelation (up to a certain size only – depending on the original size)

Example 4 – 48px Sprite Image Resized to 16px Thru CSS with Active Area of 48px

There are several CSS considerations when using sprite image being resized from its original size.

First, since a sprite image has multiple images in it and you only need to show one image for each element (and avoid showing parts of the adjacent image), we need to set up a separate element that will contain only the background-image. In this case, the <span>. On the other hand, the <a> will contain the dimensions of the active area.

Second, we have to set the <span>’s display property to inline-block so that we could control its horizontal and vertical alignment within its parent element (which is <a>). Remember, since the icon’s size is smaller than the active area, we need to align it at the middle.

Third, you have to set the desired width and height of the icons which are both 16px.

Fourth, of course, is to point to the sprite image using background-image.

[css]
.label {
display: inline-block;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
background-image: url( ‘../img/sprite.png’ );
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

.link .label {
background-position: -16px 0;
}
[/css]

Fifth, ensure that the sprite image will not tile like a pattern – this is achieved thru background-repeat: no-repeat.

Sixth is the tricky part wherein you need to calculate the size of your sprite image. In the example, I have a two-by-two (2×2) 48px sprite image – which requires a background-size: 200% 200% to display properly. Read more on CSS background-size.

The consideration here is that all the grids in your sprite image must have a consistent size – like everything has a 48px area – otherwise, the computation will show overlaps.

And notice how the background-position depended on the dimensions of width and height.

Example 5 – 48px Sprite Image with Active Area of 72px

For touch interactions using thumbs, a much bigger active area is needed – 72px. Having a 48px icon, we can safely set it as-is at 48px and set the active area to 72px. Notice the change in the CSS and how the background-position depended on the dimensions of width and height:

[css]
.label {
width: 48px;
height: 48px;
}

.link .label {
background-position: -48px 0;
}
[/css]

Conclusion

There are other approach in using icons in action elements, namely:

• using an actual single image either thru <img> or <svg>
  [html]
  <a href="#"><img src="img/icon.png"></a>
  [/html]
• using a sprite image with differently sized icons (but can’t be resized thru CSS)
• using only one container and setting the actual size in the image (including the white space – meaning within the 48px image, there’s a 16px icon at the middle and the rest is a transparent part of the image)

Link padding simply means adding padding to the HTML Anchor Element <a>.

It is important that we don’t leave the link as it is – we must make it large enough to be easily activated by any pointing device (mouse pointer or touch).

Let’s take a very simply example – a set of navigation items:

Link Padding on Hyperlinks

[codepen_embed height=”572″ theme_id=”1820″ slug_hash=”VYWaYE” default_tab=”result” user=”BrianSahagun”]See the Pen Link Padding by Brian Dys Sahagun (@BrianSahagun) on CodePen.[/codepen_embed]

In Example 1, notice that the only active area of the links are the words themselves and not the whitespace beside them. You can see the active area by the blue background highlight when you hover on the links.

Link Padding Increases the Active Area

Now, compare Example 1 to Example 2. When navigating with a pointing device such as a mouse, it is easier in Example 2 to hover on the navigation items and click the chosen link; for navigating using touch, it is also easier in Example 2 since the active area is larger and you can tap far away from the other navigation items – avoiding an accidental activating of the other links.

To pad a link, there are two things to consider:

1. Display it as block
2. Increase the size around it thru padding

[css]
a {
display: block;
padding: 1rem;
}
[/css]

Don’t Overdo It!

In Examples 1 and 2, you can see that the list has a fixed width and border that shows until where the navigation items end. Ensure that you clearly put active areas in a clear manner so that users won’t mistakenly click on a whitespace with a “hidden” link (see Example 3).

Now, why would users “click” or “touch” whitespace? I, personally, do that as a “comfort zone” knowing that activating on a whitespace releases any unknown focus on other elements – it’s similar to pressing Esc repeatedly.

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Next post will be about padding action links – think icons in web app toolbar.

Make example of how simple a semantic markup can be made into a component.

Use Search for example.

While HTML adjusted for the use of fragmentation in content structure (e.g., Form label scattered across the place and only connected by ID’s and for attributes), as well as ARIA adopted to Web Components to provide meaning and semantics to its structure and free-wheeling use of elements.

We must not forget that even webapps can be deduced into a simple document, so as long as they provide human-readable information.

The ultimate test still is stripping off the presentation layer, diving deep into the interaction layer and presenting only the information to the user.

This is the simplest we can approach designing website and applications.

Thus, we must make an element.