Generated content in CSS

I like jsFiddle. I often use it for prototyping. I might want to see what I can make in css or maybe I want to build a little template. A perfect example, I used it to mockup my work section. Since it is just a repeating template, I built the classes and styles in jsFiddle and then just dropped in the php echos. Anyway, here is something I made. It uses generated content. You can use HTML attributes in CSS. This is a classic example:

/* styles for printing */
@media print{
    /* all a tags with an href attribute */
    a[href]:after{
        /* display that href after the value */
        content: " (" attr(href) ")";
    }
}

What does this look like?

Website

Would render as Website (www.example.com/)

So with that in mind, I thought it would be cool to have a button that would render a count. So in practical applications it might be used for something like an inbox button. In the case I built it is a notifications button.

button {
    color: #333;
    padding: 4px 10px;
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
    outline: none;
    font-weight: bold;
    font-size: 12px;
    font-family: 'Corbin';
    background: #eee;
    border-radius: 3px;
    box-shadow: 0 2px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    text-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,0.8);
}

button:after {
    content: attr(data-count);
    border-radius: 10px;
    display: inline-block;
    background: #777;
    padding: 2px 5px;
    width: 15px;
    margin: 0 0 0 8px;
    color: white;
    font-weight: normal;
    border: 1px solid #555;
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 2px rgba(255,255,255,0.5),
        inset 0 -1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    text-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.6);
}​

Notifications​

If you would like to see that bad boy in action check out this fiddle.