My top “eureka” moments while learning CSS

DanielJune 2, 2020June 5, 2020

There were defining moments in our evolution as a species. Like when we discovered fire, or when we discovered electricity. Exactly like this, we have some breakthrough moments when we learn something new.

In its essence CSS is simple. We have selectors and properties that we combine to style our HTML documents.

However, there are still moments when I've felt like I have discovered that missing piece of the puzzle that was explaining why things were not behaving as intended.

So, my main breakthrough moments:

1. The CSS box model: In the beginning, it was not clear to me that if you have an element with width: 100px and border: 5px solid that element will need in total 110px of space. Things like the border, margin, and padding are not included in the width of an element. And we can change this with the box-sizing property .

2. How CSS deals with conflicting rules: What if we have:

html div p {color: blue}
body p {color: red}

What color our paragraphs will be? The two main principles that are used by CSS to decide the winning rule are specificity and cascading. Of course initially I was getting frustrated and was using !important all over the place. But getting a grip on how these principles work made writing CSS a more enjoyable experience.

3. Using CSS grid and flexbox: layout is hard in CSS. Maybe the most complicated subject. However, with the addition of CSS grid and flexbox things got way better. What took before a lot of math and "brainpower" become simpler with these two. You can see here also a way on how to decide when to use the CSS grid and when to use flexbox.

Of course, every learning experience is unique, but for me, these were the things I wished somebody told me when I've started making stuff with CSS.

Cheers and happy learning!