Whenever I get into the CSS of my sites I tend to stick with what I am used to because it makes development easier and I already know what the outcome is going to be (yeah that seems like common sense). This always seems to be the case with CSS border styles. Basically I stick with either solid or dotted simply because those are the two that stick out in my mind. Dotted comes out as dashed in IE so I am sure many of the IE users on my sites are not that impressed with that style, but I love it and we all know what a solid border looks like.
However, when playing with the design of this site yesterday morning I thought I would give another style a try to see what happens and I like the effect that it has on the site. I went with double simply because I wanted to. There is no “getting into the mind of the non-designer” insight here. Nope. I liked it, so I used it.
In any case, after the redesign (if you call it that) I was reading Cameron Moll’s site and his most recent entry Zaadz and the Evanescent Design Crew and found that Cameron used the double borders for his templates and it came out even sweeter than mine did (example).
If you need a refresher as to what the border style properties are in CSS here is a rundown:
- none (sweet)
- hidden (mostly for table stuff)
- dotted
- dashed
- solid
- double
- groove
- ridge
- inset
- outset
I’m not saying that you are better off using these instead of graphical borders, but it’s always good to have some alternatives in mind. Granted using some of those will give your site that swanky 1998 look, but maybe that is what you are aiming for.
Originally posted on April 13, 2005 @ 1:43 pm