Learn CSS Variables In 7 Minutes
Summary
TLDRIn this educational video, the presenter introduces CSS variables, a powerful feature that simplifies color management in web design. By using custom properties, designers can store color values in one place and reference them throughout the website, making it easy to update multiple elements at once. The video demonstrates how to create and apply CSS variables to change the color scheme of a website efficiently, highlighting the benefits of scalability and ease of maintenance.
Takeaways
- 🎨 CSS variables, also known as custom properties, are a powerful feature in CSS that allows values to be stored and reused throughout a document.
- 🔧 By using CSS variables, designers can manage colors and other properties more efficiently, making it easier to update and maintain a consistent look across a website.
- 🚀 The process starts by defining custom properties with two hyphens and a unique name at the root level of the document.
- 🎯 Once defined, these variables can be assigned values, such as color codes, which can then be used in various parts of the CSS.
- 🔄 CSS variables can be applied to different elements by using the `VAR()` notation, which references the variable's name within parentheses.
- 📝 Updating a CSS variable's value in one place automatically updates all instances where that variable is used, simplifying color and design changes.
- 🌈 This approach is particularly useful for large websites where a color or design element is reused extensively, as it reduces the need for manual updates across multiple elements.
- 📚 The video provides a practical example of using CSS variables to manage different color schemes, such as dark, light, slate, and primary colors.
- 🛠️ The example demonstrates how to apply CSS variables to various HTML elements like headings, paragraphs, and links, and how to update them easily.
- 🎓 The lesson emphasizes the scalability and maintainability benefits of using CSS variables in web design and development.
- 🔗 A full CSS course is available for those interested in learning more about utilizing CSS variables and other advanced CSS techniques.
- ❤️ The video encourages viewers to like, subscribe, and check out the course for a comprehensive understanding of CSS.
Q & A
What is the main topic of the video?
-The main topic of the video is the introduction and usage of CSS variables, also known as custom properties, and how they can be used to manage and update colors efficiently in a website's design.
How do CSS variables help in managing colors on a website?
-CSS variables allow you to store a value in one place and reference it in multiple other places within your CSS. This makes it easier to manage and update colors across a website, especially when dealing with a large number of elements that share the same color.
What is the syntax for declaring a CSS variable?
-To declare a CSS variable, you use two hyphens followed by the name of the variable. For example, `--my-color: #ff0000;` declares a variable named `my-color` with a red color value.
How can you use a CSS variable in your styles?
-To use a CSS variable, you employ the `var()` notation. For example, `background-color: var(--my-color);` applies the value of the `my-color` variable to the `background-color` property.
What are the benefits of using CSS variables over traditional color assignment?
-CSS variables make it easier to maintain and update colors across a website. Instead of manually changing each instance of a color, you only need to update the variable's value once, and all instances using that variable will be updated automatically.
How does the video demonstrate the use of CSS variables?
-The video demonstrates the use of CSS variables by creating color variables for dark, light, slate, and primary colors. It then shows how these variables can be used to update the background color, text color, and link color of different elements in the HTML document.
What is the purpose of the Border box reset in the video?
-The Border box reset is used to ensure that the width and height properties of an element include the content, padding, and border, making it easier to size elements accurately.
How does the video show the process of changing a website's primary color?
-The video shows the process by changing the value of the `--my-color-primary` variable from red to purple. This change is reflected across all elements using this variable as their color, without the need to update each element individually.
What shortcut does VS Code offer for using CSS variables?
-VS Code offers a shortcut where by typing two hyphens (`--`), a list of all available CSS variables is displayed, allowing you to easily select and insert the desired variable into your code.
What is the advantage of using CSS variables for a growing website?
-As a website grows, the same color might be used in hundreds of different places. Using CSS variables makes it manageable to update these colors in a centralized way, avoiding the need to search through and manually change each instance of the color in the codebase.
How can you tell if a CSS variable has been successfully applied in the video?
-In the video, after assigning a CSS variable to an element's property using the `var()` notation, the change is reflected in the visual representation of the website, showing the updated color as defined by the variable.
Outlines
🎨 Introduction to CSS Variables
This paragraph introduces the concept of CSS variables, also known as custom properties, which are a powerful feature in CSS that allows values to be stored and reused throughout a stylesheet. The video demonstrates how to use CSS variables to manage colors more efficiently, starting with a simple example of changing the background and text colors in an HTML document. The speaker explains the problem of managing multiple color values as a website grows and how changing a single color value can become a tedious task, emphasizing the need for a scalable solution like CSS variables.
🔧 Implementing CSS Variables for Color Management
In this paragraph, the speaker walks through the process of implementing CSS variables to manage colors in a more scalable way. The explanation includes creating custom properties with the double hyphen syntax and assigning them values, such as hex color codes. The video shows how to apply these variables to various HTML elements, replacing direct color values with variable references. The speaker also introduces a shortcut in VS Code for easily selecting and applying CSS variables, demonstrating how this can save time and effort when updating multiple elements at once.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡CSS
💡Custom Properties
💡Border Box Reset
💡Hex Values
💡VAR Notation
💡Scalability
💡Anchor Element
💡Paragraph
💡Color Management
💡Website Growth
💡Teaching
Highlights
The video is sponsored by the creator to promote a full CSS course.
The lesson focuses on custom Properties, also known as CSS variables.
CSS variables allow a value to be stored in one place and referenced in multiple other places.
An example is given where an H1 element with the class 'title' displays 'hello, world'.
The Border box reset and everything resets are mentioned as part of the CSS setup.
Changing the background color of the body element is demonstrated using a hex value.
The issue of managing multiple colors as a website grows is discussed.
A scenario is presented where changing a color across the site would require updating each instance manually.
CSS variables are introduced as a solution to the scalability problem.
Custom properties are declared at the top of the file with two hyphens and a name.
Four color variables are created: color-dark, color-light, color-slate, and color-primary.
The hex values from the elements' color properties are assigned to the corresponding CSS variables.
The video demonstrates updating the background color of the body using a CSS variable.
The process of updating the color property of other elements using CSS variables is shown.
A practical application of CSS variables is illustrated by changing the primary color to purple.
The video encourages viewers to like, subscribe, and consider the full CSS course.
Transcripts
this video is sponsored by myself learn
CSS with my full CSS course which is now
available on my website sling the
dragon. in this lesson we go over one of
my favorite features in the CSS language
custom Properties or also often referred
to as CSS variables CSS variables allow
a value to be stored in one place then
referenced in multiple other places in
my index.html inside my empty body
element I'll add an H1 element
with the class of
title and that displays hello
world then in my CSS we see I already
have the Border box reset and the
everything resets now let's say I wanted
to change the color of the background
I'll select the body
element give it the background color
property and I'll set it to hasht 0 2 0
6 1 7 when I save we see our back ground
is now dark however we don't see our
title anymore so I'll select our Title
by its class name of title and I'll give
it the color
property and I'll set it to # F1 F5
F9 when I save we see our title is now
white I'll head back to my index.html
and under our title I'll add a paragraph
with the class of
description and that displays some
filler
text then in my CSS I'll select a repair
graph by its class name of
description and I'll give it the color
property of #
9483
B8 when I save we see our paragraph is a
darker shade of white and finally back
in my index.html under our paragraph
I'll add an anchor
element with the class of
Link and that dis Place learn
more in my CSS I'll select our anchor
element by its class name of
link and I'll give it the color
property and I'll set it to #
E1 D
48 when I save we see our link is now
red we currently have a total of four
colors a dark color a light color a
grayish color and a red color managing
these four colors for now isn't really a
problem however eventually your website
is going to grow as your website grows
the same color might be used in hundreds
of different places and when that
happens our four colors will be
unmanageable and to make things worse
imagine after weeks of Designing and
coding you suddenly decide that instead
of this red color you want everything
that has this red color to instead be
purple this decision will have you
Scavenging through your entire code base
in search for every property that has
this red color assigned so that you can
replace them with a purple color instead
so in a nutshell this isn't very
scalable the solution of course is CSS
variables to create CSS variables at the
top of the file I'll select the root P
sudo
class and inside the curly braces I can
declare a custom property that begins
with two hyphens followed by whatever we
want to call our variable I want to
create color variable
so I'll call the first one color-
dark we just declared our first custom
property however we need to assign it a
value I'll copy the hex value of our
dark background color and paste it as a
value to our first custom
property I'll create a second custom
property called-- color-
light and I'll copy the hex value from
our title and paste it inside our light
variable
I'll create a third custom property
called-- color-
slate and I'll copy the hex value from
our paragraph and paste it inside our
slate
variable and finally I'll create a
fourth custom property called D- color-
primary and I'll copy the hex value from
our link and paste it inside our primary
variable now that we've created our four
CSS variables on my body element I'll
remove the hex value from the background
color property then on my title I'll
remove the value from the color
property on the description I'll remove
the value from the color property and
finally on our link I'll remove the
value from the color
property when I save we see our colors
are back to their defaults to use our
variables starting with the background
color on our body element I'll assign it
to our dark custom property to do so we
need to use the VAR
notation and inside the parentheses I
can just type out the name of our
variable-- color-
dark when I save we see the background
color property is being assigned to the
value that we defined in our-- color-
dark variable now on our title I'll give
our color property the VAR
notation and inside the parenthesis I
can select the variable I want I want
the light variable so I just need to
type out the name of the variable--
color-
light on our description I'll give the
color property the Slate
variable and finally on our link if you
think typing out the VAR notation each
time is a hassle vs code has a CSS
variable shortcut where by only typing
to hyphens we get a list of all our
variables and when I select the primary
one we see it automatically added the
VAR notation when I save our link is now
red this little project of ours with our
title our paragraph and our anchor
element really doesn't do justice to how
useful CSS variables are just imagine
for 1 second that we had over a 100
different individual elements each with
the primary color of red and then say
you decided you wanted the primary color
of your website to be purple instead
you'd have to individually update the
color property of each element that has
your primary color of red CSS variables
solves this issue because now say I
still had hundreds of elements with the
primary color of red but this time I was
using CSS variables to change the
primary color of my website from red to
purple instead of having to update
hundreds of individual elements I can
just update the value in my custom
property from what it currently is to
what I want it to be I'll change it to
#t
9333
EA and when I save our link is now
purple if you enjoyed this video please
consider giving it a like and hitting
that subscribe button also if my way of
teaching resonates with you do check out
my full CSS course the link to it is in
the description of this video thanks for
watching
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