CSS3 is one of the coolest new web technologies available to web developers right now. Using some of its many features, it is possible to reproduce the effects that you might have previously done in Photoshop, with CSS code that is more maintainable, faster to load, and hip with the latest trends. Read on to learn about the power tools available to you and how to combine them to produce the ultimate graphical effects.

The new CSS3 property border-image is a little tricky, but it can allow you to create flexible boxes with custom borders (or drop shadows, if that’s your thing) with a single div and a single image. In this article I explain how the border-image shorthand property works in today’s browsers.