Well, we surely have a lot of different ways to achieve similar effects and with CSS the hardest part is to make it look good in almost every browser.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time, if you get one good snippet that does what you want (and you understand what is happening) you don’t need to reinvent it every time you need a simple round corner, right?

Thus, our point here is to collect some cool CSS effects that you should be using:

• Min / Max width (IE included)
• RGBA (IE included)
• Opacity (IE included)
• Image rotation / scaling (IE included)
• FullScreen Background (IE included)
• Background pattern or bullet without image file
• Text Shadow (IE included)
• Multiple borders (IE included)
• Box Shadows (IE included)
• Rounded corners
• Screen reader only accessible content
• Don’t use negative text-indent
• Clearfix (IE included)
• @font-face (IE included)
• Pull quotes without image
• CSS for iPhone4 (higher resolution)
• CSS landscape / portrait orientation for mobiles

So, Let’s rock!

Min / Max width (IE included)

Well, many of you are used to just replace the lack of min / max width / height for IE with fixed dimensions, right? But you don’t need to do it anymore. IE is not a strict standards browser and sometimes we can take advantage of this to code things that would be awful to see in standard CSS code.

You can, in this case, insert some IE expressions (basically, JavaScript code) to check current body width and adjust element’s width as follows:

#content {
width: expression(document.body.clientWidth 1242? "1240px" : "auto");
min-width: 760px;
max-width: 1240px;
}

RGBA (IE included)

This time we will need some IE filters to get the job done. You’ll have the standard markup, IE6 correction and IE8 correction.

IE corrections is based on gradient filter, that actually we put just one color to the beginning and the end, and BAM! We have a pretty RGBA background.

The first two digits should be the opacity and the last one should be the color itself. Don’t know why, it just don’t get the opacity right… Maybe its just a bug inside a bug :)

.element {
background-color: transparent;
background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255,0.8);
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#80ffffff,endColorstr=#80ffffff);
-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#80ffffff,endColorstr=#80ffffff)";
}

Opacity (IE included)

Wow, filters again! But this time we have a different syntax for IE8 and earlier versions. And again be sure to put khtml, moz and standard declarations.

.selector {
ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)"; /* internet explorer 8 */
filter: alpha(opacity=50); /* internet explorer 5~7 */
-khtml-opacity: 0.5; /* khtml, old safari */
-moz-opacity: 0.5; /* mozilla, netscape */
opacity: 0.5; /* fx, safari, opera */
}

Image rotation / scaling (IE included)

Another pretty cool and virtually unused feature is image rotation / scaling. There is another filter that allows you to rotate images, but unfortunately it just allows you 90º increments.

Although you can also mirror images, that makes cool image editing possible to almost every real browser and IE. For real browsers we will use the transform property with each vendor prefix.

img {
transform:
rotate(180deg)
scale(-1, 1);

/* for firefox, safari, chrome, etc. */
-webkit-transform:
rotate(180deg)
scale(-1, 1);
-moz-transform:
rotate(180deg)
scale(-1, 1);

/* for ie */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=2, mirror=1);

/* opera */
-o-transform:
rotate(180deg)
scale(-1, 1);
}

Fullscreen Background (IE included)

Sometimes we just need a quick way to get full screen backgrounds. Well, hope you don’t use JavaScript just to do this, because you can do it with a few lines of CSS.

The magic here is to set a div that goes fullscreen and inside it you can put a landscape, portrait or full sized image.

.content {
position: relative;
width: 760px;
z-index: 10;
}
.background {
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
position: absolute;
z-index:2;
}
.portrait {
height: 100%;
}
.landscape {
width: 100%;
}
.full {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}

Background pattern or bullet without image file

Pretty sad that IE doesn’t allows you to use base64 encoding instead of real files. The best part is to use it for mobiles, since it saves you some http requests and precious time.
I’ve used it for a custom list style image without images. I just generated the base64 from Patternfy and pasted it in my CSS, like this:

ul {
list-style-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAAJCAYAAAAVb42gAAAAFklEQVQImWNgIAro56z9T4Ygbg5BAABTdwtkrDt7swAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==);
}

Text Shadow (IE included)

Again we will need some IE filters. But this time IE filters can destroy your font’s readability, so try not to use it too much and preferably, only when working with larger fonts.

p {
text-shadow: #000000 0 0 1px;
zoom:1;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Glow(Color=#000000,Strength=1);

-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=-1, OffY=-1, Color=#000000)progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=0, OffY=-1, Color=#000000)progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=1, OffY=-1, Color=#000000)progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=1, OffY=0, Color=#000000)progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=1, OffY=1, Color=#000000)progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=0, OffY=1, Color=#000000)progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=-1, OffY=1, Color=#000000)progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=-1, OffY=0, Color=#000000)";
}

Multiple borders (IE included)

When you want more than one border, for real browsers you’ll need to use an outline or :before and :after elements. For IE you could use filters to gain some an extra border.

div {
-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#212121,direction=180,strength=0)"; /* IE 8 */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#212121,direction=180,strength=0); /* IE 7- */
}
div:before {
position: absolute;
top: 0px;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
border-top: 1px solid #212121; /* top border! */
content: '';
}
div:after {
position: absolute;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
top: 1px;
border-bottom: 1px solid #212121; /* bottom border! */
content: '';
}

Box Shadows (IE included)

The same filter we’ve used to create a second border can be used to generate box shadows. Be aware that this filter can mess up an element’s width, so if you want to use it with any grid system, prepare for the headache.

.shadow {
-moz-box-shadow: 0 0 4px #000;
-webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 4px #000;
-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Glow(color=#666666,strength=3)";
filter:
progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=0,strength=3)
progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=90,strength=3)
progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=180,strength=3)
progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=270,strength=3);
box-shadow: 0 0 4px #000;
}

Rounded corners

The bad part about almost-standard properties is that each browser implements its syntax differently. So for round corners we have a pretty strange behavior, where standards browsers have different ways to say same thing:

.rounded {
-moz-border-radius: 10px; /* gecko */
-webkit-border-radius: 10px; /* webkit */
border-radius: 10px; /* CSS3 standard */
-khtml-border-radius: 10px; /* old konkeror */

-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-top-right-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-top-left-radius: 10px;

-khtml-border-radius-bottomright: 10px;
-khtml-border-radius-bottomleft: 10px;
-khtml-border-radius-topright: 10px;
-khtml-border-radius-topleft: 10px;

-moz-border-radius-bottomright: 10px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 10px;
-moz-border-radius-topright: 10px;
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 10px;

border-bottom-right-radius: 10px;
border-bottom-left-radius: 10px;
border-top-right-radius: 10px;
border-top-left-radius: 10px;
}

Screen reader only accessible content

Sometimes you want to improve the accessibility of your site, so you put some fancy links like “Jump to content” or “Jump to navigation”. So you just put “display: none” or “visibility: hidden” and hope it works, right? Well, it doesn’t. Some tests show that many screen readers just ignore the display:none or visibility: hidden part, so you don’t have any accessibility improvement.

What you can do instead is to use position absolute and hide this content above browsers visible area. But you have some risks on this technique, since it hides content, Google can consider it gray or black hat.

.hidden {
position: absolute;
top: -10000px;
left: -10000px;
}

Don’t use negative text-indent

Since we’re talking about hidden content, take one more note, never use negative text-indent again. This is a known technique so you have a lot of SEO downsides by using it, since many bots can recognize it nowadays.
Just use alt attribute, that is much safer than hide content.

Clearfix (IE included)

Many of you know about .clearfix method for correcting heights when you use floats. Well, in many of these cases, that amount of code could be replaced by just two lines:

.clearfix {
zoom:1;
overflow:hidden;
}

@font-face (IE included)

If you’re still using cufon just because you don’t trust @font-face, think again.
Font Squirrel provides an amazing @font-face generator service, that allows you to put really good looking fonts in your site without worrying about all that JavaScript stuff.
The final code provided is something like this:

@font-face {
font-family: 'MandatoryRegular';
src: url('font/mandator-webfont.eot');
src: url('font/mandator-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
url('font/mandator-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
url('font/mandator-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
url('font/mandator-webfont.svg#MandatoryRegular') format('svg');
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
}

Pull quotes without image

We talked about this before, but it is possible to create curly quotes without any image. And it is not that hard. You just need a :before and blockquote:

blockquote:before {
display: block;
float: left;
margin: 10px 15px 0 0;
font-size: 100px; /* let's make it a big quote! */
content: open-quote; /* here we define our :before as a smart quote. It could be any content, even the HTML entity alternative to this opening quote, that is “ */
color: #bababa;
text-shadow: 0 1px 1px #909090;
}

CSS for iPhone4 (higher resolution)

As time goes by we get more and more powerful mobile devices. It is a good practice to give create a mobile version, with reduced images and overall files size, but we have also to give a better experience for the ones with newer devices.
Since iPhone4 has a higher resolution, if you don’t provide a better (and larger) version of you logo, for example, your users will get a blurry version of it. This is a problem that can be solved with a very few lines:

@media handheld, only screen and (max-width: 767px) {
.logo {
/* common low-res and low-size, of course */
background: url(logo.jpg) no-repeat;
}
}

@media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {
.logo {
background: url(logo2x.jpg) no-repeat;
background-size: 212px 303px;
}
}

CSS landscape / portrait orientation for mobiles

This is a nice starting point for correcting layout bugs in each version of each layout mode for many mobiles, provided by stuffAndNoise

/* Smartphones (portrait and landscape) ----------- */
@media only screen
and (min-device-width : 320px)
and (max-device-width : 480px) {
/* Styles */
}

/* Smartphones (landscape) ----------- */
@media only screen
and (min-width : 321px) {
/* Styles */
}

/* Smartphones (portrait) ----------- */
@media only screen
and (max-width : 320px) {
/* Styles */
}

/* iPads (portrait and landscape) ----------- */
@media only screen
and (min-device-width : 768px)
and (max-device-width : 1024px) {
/* Styles */
}

/* iPads (landscape) ----------- */
@media only screen
and (min-device-width : 768px)
and (max-device-width : 1024px)
and (orientation : landscape) {
/* Styles */
}

/* iPads (portrait) ----------- */
@media only screen
and (min-device-width : 768px)
and (max-device-width : 1024px)
and (orientation : portrait) {
/* Styles */
}

/* Desktops and laptops ----------- */
@media only screen
and (min-width : 1224px) {
/* Styles */
}

/* Large screens ----------- */
@media only screen
and (min-width : 1824px) {
/* Styles */
}

/* iPhone 4 ----------- */
@media
only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio : 1.5),
only screen and (min-device-pixel-ratio : 1.5) {
/* Styles */
}