I offer support for a few web sites, and not too long ago, I created a WordPress theme for Omnis Risk (http://www.OmnisRisk.com). Actually this was just a slightly modified version of the theme that I’d done some time ago for Omnis Tools (http://www.OmnisTools.com), with some style changes to match the branding for the risk management logo.

I made the change for Omnis Risk. They were in a hurry to get a site up in time for the Affordable Care Act, so mostly it was just a matter of removing some styling from the Omnis Tools theme, and changing which jQuery UI Theme Roller theme (used for colors). But because of that, it didn’t have the finished styling of the Omnis Tools site:

The problem was that some of the styling eliminated to change the color scheme also caused some of the desirable display elements to loses styling. So the customer asked if I could add a border to delineate the content area.

I took a quick look at the site, thinking that it might mean that I needed to do some coding changes to split the page out so that I could add a border around the content. Fortunately though, since the page already had the proper layout, I just needed to add some styling. In WordPress this can be accomplished either by editing the style sheet with JetPack, or by using the appearance editor.

On this site, I have a DIV that has the ID of “main”, so to get the border around the text, all I needed was to add a style with a background. The first pass to show it to the client was to bring up Chrome, and add an inline style to show it could be done and ask about what color she’d like to see.

After looking at that she asked about using a light grey, which reminded me that we were actually using a gradient for this same thing on the Omnis Risk site.

Using the Ultimate CSS Gradient Editor on the ColorZilla site, I created the gradient. This is an awesome site that will generate a CSS snippet for any sort of gradient you want that will work across different browsers.

In my style sheet, I had a class defined for the grey gradient as:

/* 
 * Gray gradient for page background ...
*/
.greyGradient {

    /* For IE8 and below */
    background: rgb(255,255,255);

    /* IE9 SVG, needs conditional override of 'filter' to 'none' */
    background: url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,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);
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%, rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* FF3.6+ */
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,rgba(255,255,255,1)), color-stop(100%,rgba(224,224,224,1))); /* Chrome,Safari4+ */
    background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ */
    background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* Opera 11.10+ */
    background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* IE10+ */
    background: linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* W3C */
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#ffffff', endColorstr='#e0e0e0',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-8 */

}

So activating the grey gradient on the main DIV was a simple matter of adding that ID to the CSS as:

/* 
 * Gray gradient for page background ...
*/
.greyGradient, #main {

    /* For IE8 and below */
    background: rgb(255,255,255);

    /* IE9 SVG, needs conditional override of 'filter' to 'none' */
    background: url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,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);
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%, rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* FF3.6+ */
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,rgba(255,255,255,1)), color-stop(100%,rgba(224,224,224,1))); /* Chrome,Safari4+ */
    background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ */
    background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* Opera 11.10+ */
    background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* IE10+ */
    background: linear-gradient(top,  rgba(255,255,255,1) 0%,rgba(224,224,224,1) 100%); /* W3C */
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#ffffff', endColorstr='#e0e0e0',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-8 */

}

And now the site looks much cleaner: