Almond.CSS

Almond.CSS is a collection of class-less CSS styles to make simple websites look better. Almond.CSS helps in two ways: it normalizes the CSS styles to provide similar experience cross-browser, and it spices things a little by adding custom styles (that can be personalized!)

Use the different HTML5 semantic tags on your website, include the library in your project, and let CSS and the browser work their magic. Just combine your HTML and Almond CSS (no JavaScript needed.) You can see a demo in this repo running.

The main goals of this project are:

• Use only tags: no classes or IDs.
• Cross-browser compatibility: look as close as possible in all browsers.
• Easily themable: using CSS variables and HSL colors.
• Responsive, accessible, and usable.
• Lightweight: limit the size to 3KB (gzipped).
• Keep it simple but elegant.

How to include Almond.CSS in your project

NPM

Almond.CSS is available as an npm package to make it easy to install and use on any project. These are the steps to include it in any project (using npm):

1. Install the package:

    npm install almond.css
   

2. Add the import to the app entry point (e.g. in apps created with create-react-app, it would be App.js):

    import "almond.css/dist/almond.min.js";
   

3. Build and start your app

CDN

There are CDN services like jsDelivr or unpkg, that work with github and npm libraries, providing a fast and reliable delivery.

You can include Almond.CSS using the <link> tag (You only need one, not all):

<!-- loads all the styles (including icons and images) from jsDelivr -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/alvaromontoro/almond.css@latest/dist/almond.min.css" />

<!-- loads the light version of the library from jsDelivr -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/alvaromontoro/almond.css@latest/dist/almond.lite.min.css" />

<!-- loads all the styles (including icons and images) from unpkg -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/almond.css@latest/dist/almond.min.css" />

<!-- loads the light version of the library from unpkg -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/almond.css@latest/dist/almond.lite.min.css" />

Theming

We based the theming on CSS variables and HSL colors. HSL allows to define a color based on three parameters: Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. Provide a primary and secondary colors using HSL, and see the demo page change automatically.

The default primary color is a dark pale blue, and the default secondary color is a medium gray.

Some values that devs can specify:

Widgets

By combining some "not-too common" HTML attributes with some CSS variables, we can generate a series of widgets without the need to use JavaScript or HTML classes.

Here is a list of the widgets available at the moment:

• Circular progress bar

Development

Here are the instructions on how to copy the code of this library into your local machine and build it. They use npm, but you can run similar commands with yarn.

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/alvaromontoro/almond.css.git

Enter the project directory (almond.css):

cd almond.css

Install the development dependencies:

npm i

Build the library by compiling the sass files:

npm run build

This will generate four files in the dist folder:

• almond.css: the raw/readable version of the library
• almond.min.css: a minified version of the library
• almond.lite.css: the light version of the library without icons
• almond.lite.min.css: light minified version

You can test the library by opening the static HTML file located in the demo directory.

Instead of having to run the build script each time that a change is made, you can add a watch functionality that will generate the almond.css file every time there is a change in any of the sass files:

npm run watch

Notice that only the almond.css file (used in the demo html page) will be generated. Once you are ready to build for production, you will have to run the build script to generate the light and minified versions described above.