A cool-looking box

In this assessment, you'll get some more practice in creating cool-looking boxes by trying to create an eye-catching box.

Prerequisites: Before attempting this assessment you should have already worked through all the articles in this module.
Objective: To test comprehension of the CSS box model and other box-related features such as borders and backgrounds.

Starting point

To get this assessment started, you should:

  • Make local copies of the starting HTML and CSS — save them as index.html and style.css in a new directory.

Alternatively, you could use an online editor such as CodePen, JSFiddle, or Glitch. You could paste the HTML and fill in the CSS into one of these online editors.

Note: If you get stuck, you can reach out to us in one of our communication channels.

Project brief

Your task is to create a cool, fancy box and explore the fun we can have with CSS.

General tasks

  • Apply the CSS to the HTML.

Styling the box

We'd like you to style the provided <div>, giving it the following:

  • A reasonable width for a large box, say around 200 pixels.
  • A reasonable height for a large box, centering the text vertically in the process.
  • Center the box horizontally.
  • Center the text within the box.
  • A slight increase in font size, to around 17-18 pixel computed style. Use rems. Write a comment about how you worked out the value.
  • A base color for the design. Give the box this color as its background color.
  • A contrasting color for the text and a black text shadow.
  • A fairly subtle border radius.
  • A 1-pixel solid border with a color similar to the base color, but a slightly darker shade.
  • A linear semi-transparent black gradient that goes toward the bottom right corner. Make it completely transparent at the start, grading to around 0.2 opacity by 30% along, and remaining at the same color until the end.
  • Multiple box shadows. Give it one standard box shadow to make the box look slightly raised off the page. The other two should be inset box shadows — a semi-transparent white shadow near the top left and a semi-transparent black shadow near the bottom right — to add to the nice raised 3D look of the box.

Hints and tips

Example

The following screenshot shows an example of what the finished design could look like:

A big red box with rounded corners. White text with drop shadow reads 'this is a cool box'.