Bunny Fonts

Bunny Fonts bills itself as the “privacy-first web font platform designed to put privacy back into the internet.”According to its FAQ:

With a zero-tracking and no-logging policy, Bunny Fonts helps you stay fully GDPR compliant and puts your user’s personal data into their own hands.

Hard for my mind not to go straight to Google Fonts. Bunny Fonts even says they are a drop-in replacement for Google Fonts. It offers the same open source fonts and holds the same API structure used by Google Fonts.

Now, I’m no GDPR expert but the possibility of Google collecting data through its Fonts API is hardly unsurprising or even unexpected. I was curious to check out Google’s privacy statement for Fonts:

The Google Fonts API logs the details of the HTTP request, which includes the timestamp, requested URL, and all HTTP headers (including referrer and user agent string) provided in connection with the use of our CSS API.

IP addresses are not logged.

Comparing that to what Bunny Fonts says in its FAQ:

When using Bunny Fonts, no personal data or logs are stored. All the requests are processed completely anonymously.

Or perhaps more thoroughly explained on the bunny.net GDPR statement:

In most cases, the data held and collected by bunny.net does not contain any user identifiable data. In some cases, which depend on how you are using bunny.net and how your website is structured, personal data may be collected from your users. Such information includes hosting user uploaded content as well as personal data that might be transmitted in the URL, User-Agent or Referer headers of the HTTP protocol.

Sounds pretty similar, right? Well, it may not have been that similar earlier this year when a German court ruled that embedded Google Fonts violated GDPR compliance. It appears that one line in the Google Fonts privacy statement about IP addresses came after the ruling, once the API scrubbed them from collected data.

So, do you need to ditch Google Fonts to be GDPR compliant? I would imagine not if IP addresses were the sole concern, but I’ll leave that for folks who know the rules to comment on that.

But if you are concerned about Google Font’s GDPR compliance, I guess Bunny Fonts is worth a look! And seeing that it’s powered by bunny.net’s CDN services, you should get pretty comparable performance marks.

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Text-overflow: ellipsis considered harmful

Eric Eggert:

There are a few legitimate use cases for this technique. For example, you might have a table with titles and descriptions. To preserve more space for the title, you constrain the description to one line on small viewports to the one-line and you repeat the description on the detail page for this item.

However, I often see it used on items like buttons or even form labels to make them look nicer(?) or when aligning them vertically. But once you change the viewport or resize the text, the end of the text disappears.

I think “… if used in certain situations” belongs there, but it certainly makes for a better blog post title without it. As Eric says, there are legitimate use cases for truncating text. Maybe only a few, but legitimate nonetheless.

The ultimate goal is to prevent “losing” data, something that can certainly happen in CSS. Text that inadvertently overflows a container is lost in the sense that it’s simply not there. And if that text is simply not there, users will miss it, even if it is the best and most well-crafted call to action ever published to the web.

Eric points out that there is no way to make the text truncated by text-overflow: ellipsis visible. Once it’s gone, it’s gone (although screen readers seem to announce it). It’s practically lost data. You might be OK with that. That’s cool as long as you know what’s happening and it’s intended.

But here’s what Eric says that made me want to share this:

Don’t constrain the content to fit your design, make your CSS flexible to handle longer words gracefully.

Again, you might want to conform content to the design. But I’d probably argue, like Eric, that the design should adapt to the content rather than the other way around. I have a hard time recalling any situation where the text on a page is unimportant or without purpose to the extent that I’d be cool cutting if off at any arbitrary point determined by a CSS property. Maybe an archive of blog posts where each post shows an excerpt of the post content before truncating, but that’s not exactly a use case for text-overflow: ellipse.

CSS has the tools to make a flexible design that accounts for varying lengths of text. So maybe err on the side of writing defensive CSS… CSS that anticipates issues and knows how to gracefully handle different content scenarios. text-overflow: ellipsis might be part of your CSS arsenal for that. But it might also be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Worth asking whether losing that data is worth the cost of what that content is supposed to do before giving giving it a haircut.

While we’re talking about truncating text…

Link on Oct 1, 2021

Line Clampin’ (Truncating Multiple Line Text)

data loss text-overflow

Chris Coyier

Link on Sep 20, 2021

Embracing Asymmetrical Design

data loss text-overflow

Chris Coyier

Link on Jul 21, 2020

Using Flexbox and text ellipsis together

data loss text-overflow

Chris Coyier

Link on Sep 4, 2019

Multiline truncated text with “show more” button

data loss text-overflow

Chris Coyier

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How I Chose an Animation Library for My Solitaire Game

There is an abundance of both CSS and JavaScript libraries for animation libraries out there. So many, in fact, that choosing the right one for your project can seem impossible. That’s the situation I faced when I decided to build an online Solitaire game. I knew I’d need an animation library, but which was the right one to choose?

In this article, I’ll go through which considerations I made, what to look out for and present you with some of the most popular libraries available. I’ll go through some real-world examples with you to illustrate my points, and in the end, hopefully, you’ll be better equipped than me when I first had to choose an animation library.

Your mileage with this advice may vary, of course. Everything I’m sharing here is specific to a thing I wanted to build. Your project may have completely different requirements and priorities and that’s OK. I think what’s important here is getting a first-hand account of thinking like a front-end developer with a particular goal.

Speaking of which, I do consider myself a front-end developer but my background is super heavy in design. So I know code, but not to the extent of someone who is a JavaScript engineer. Just wanted to clear that up because experience can certainly impact the final decision.

Here’s the goal

Before we get into any decision-making let’s take a look at the sorts of animations I needed to make in this CSS-Tricks-ified version of the game:

Crazy, right? There’s nothing exactly trivial about these animations. There’s a lot going on — sometimes simultaneously — and a lot to orchestrate. Plus, a majority of the animations are triggered by user interactions. So, that left me with a few priorities heading into my decision:

• Smooth animations: The way animations are applied can have a big impact on whether they run smoothly, or display a little choppiness.
• Performance: Adopting any library is going to add weight to a project and I wanted my game to be as lean as possible.
• Convenience: I wanted a nice, clean syntax that makes it easier to write and manage the animations. I’d even trade a little extra convenience for a small performance cost if it allows me to write better, more maintainable code. Again, this bodes well for a designer-turned-developer.
• Browser support: Of course I wanted my game to work on any modern browser using some form of progressive enhancement to prevent completely borking legacy browsers. Plus, I definitely wanted  some future-proofing.

That’s what I took with me as I went in search of the right tool for this particular job.

Choosing between CSS or JavaScript animation libraries

The first thing I considered when choosing an animation library was whether to go with a CSS or JavaScript-based library. There are lots of great CSS libraries, many of them with excellent performance which was a high priority for me. I was looking to do some heavy-duty animations, like the  ability to sequence animations and get callbacks on animation completion. That’s all totally possible with pure CSS — still, it’s a lot less smooth than what most JavaScript libraries offer.

Let’s see how a simple sequenced animation looks in CSS and compare it to jQuery, which has plenty of built-in animation helpers:

The animations look the same but are created differently. To make the CSS animation, first, we have to define the keyframe animation in our CSS and attach it to a class:

.card.move {
  animation : move 2s;
}

@keyframes move {
  0% { left: 0 }
  50% { left: 100px }
  100% { left: 0 }
}

We then execute the animation using JavaScript and listen for a CSS callback on the element:

var cardElement = document.getElementsByClassName("card")[0];
var statusElement = document.getElementsByClassName("status")[0];

cardElement.classList.add("move");
statusElement.innerHTML = "Animating"

var animationEndCallback = function() {
  cardElement.classList.remove("move");
  statusElement.innerHTML = "Inactive"
}

cardElement.addEventListener("webkitAnimationEnd", animationEndCallback);
cardElement.addEventListener("oAnimationEnd", animationEndCallback); 
cardElement.addEventListener("antionend", animationEndCallback);

Having things happen in different places might be fine in a simple example like this, but it can become very confusing once things get a bit more complex. 

Compare this to how the animation is done with jQuery:

$(".status").text("Animating")
$( ".card" ).animate({
  left: "100px"
}, 1000);
$( ".card" ).animate({
  left: 0
}, 1000, function() {
  $(".status").text("Inactive")
});

Here, everything happens in the same place, simplifying things should the animations grow more complex in the future.

It seemed clear that a JavaScript library was the right way to go, but which was the right one to choose for my Solitaire game? I mean, jQuery is great and still widely used even today, but that’s not something I want to hang my hat on. There are plenty of JavaScript animation libraries, so I wanted to consider something built specifically to handle the type of heavy animations I had in mind.

Choosing a JavaScript animation library

It quickly became apparent to me that there’s no lack of JavaScript animation libraries and new, exciting technologies. They all have benefits and drawbacks, so let’s go through some of the ones I considered and why.

The Web Animations API is one such case that might replace many JavaScript animation libraries in the future. With it, you’ll be able to create complex staggered animations without loading any external libraries and with the same performance as CSS animations. The only drawback is that not all browsers support it yet. 

The <canvas> element presents another exciting opportunity. In it, we can animate things with JavaScript, as we would with the DOM, but the animation is rendered as raster, which means we can make some high-performance animations. The only drawback is that the canvas element is essentially rendered as an image in the DOM, so if we’re looking for pixel-perfection, we might be out of luck. As someone acutely in tune with design, this was a dealbreaker for me.

I needed something tried and tested, so I knew I probably had to go with one of the many JavaScript libraries. I started looking at libraries and narrowed my choices to Anime.js and GSAP. They both seemed to handle complex animations well and had excellent notes on performance. Anime is a well-maintained library with over 42.000 stars on GitHub, while GSAP is a super popular, battle-tested library with a thriving community.

An active community was critical to me since I needed a place to ask for help, and I didn’t want to use a library that might later be abandoned. I considered this as part of my convenience requirements.

Sequencing animations and callbacks

Once I had my choices narrowed down, the next step was to implement a complex animation using my two libraries. A recurrent animation in a solitaire game is that of a card moving somewhere and then turning over, so let’s see how that looks:

Both animations look great! They’re smooth, and implementing both of them was pretty straightforward. Both libraries had a timeline function that made creating sequences a breeze. This is how the implementation looks in AnimeJS:

var timeline = anime.timeline({
  begin: function() {
    $(".status").text("Animating")
  },
  complete: function() {
    $(".status").text("Inactive")
  }
});

timeline.add({
  targets: '.card',
  left: [0, 300],
  easing: 'easeInOutSine',
  duration: 500
}).add({
  targets: '.card .back',
  rotateY: [0, 90],
  easing: 'easeInSine',
  duration: 200
}).add({
  targets: '.card .front',
  rotateY: [-90, 0],
  easing: 'easeOutSine',
  duration: 200
})

Anime’s timeline() function comes built-in with callbacks on beginning and ending the animation, and creating the sequence is as easy as appending the sequential animations. First, I move the card, then I turn my back-image 90 degrees, so it goes out of view, and then I turn my front-image 90 degrees, so it comes into view.

The same implementation using GSAP’s timeline() function looks very similar:

var timeline = gsap.timeline({
  onStart: function() {
    $(".status").text("Animating")
  },
  onComplete: function() {
    $(".status").text("Inactive")
  }
});

timeline.fromTo(".card", {
  left: 0
}, {
  duration: 0.5,
  left: 300
}).fromTo(".card .back", {
  rotationY: 0
}, {
  rotationY: 90,
  ease: "power1.easeIn",
  duration: 0.2
}).fromTo(".card .front", {
  rotationY: -90
}, {
  rotationY: 0,
  ease: "power1.easeOut",
  duration: 0.2
})

Decision time

The main difference between Anime and GSAP appears to be the syntax, where GSAP might be a little more elaborate. I was stuck with two great libraries that had very similar functionality, were able to deal with complex animation, and had a thriving community. It seemed like I had a tie race!

Priority	Anime	GSAP
Smooth animations	✅	✅
Performance	✅	✅
Convenience	✅	✅
Browser support	✅	✅

So, what made me choose one library over the other?

I was very concerned about how the library would act under pressure. Having laggy animations in a game like Solitaire can greatly impact how fun it is to play the game. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fully see how the library performed before I created the game. Luckily, GSAP had made a stress test that compared different animation libraries to each other, including Anime.

Looking at that, GSAP certainly looked to be the superior library for dealing with loads of complex animations. GSAP was giving me upwards of 26 frames per second on a crazy heavy animation that Anime was only able to top out at 19.  After reading up on GSAP more and looking into their forums, it became clear that performance was of the highest priority to the guys behind GSAP.

And even though both GSAP and Anime have been around a while, Anime’s repo has been sitting somewhat dormant a couple of years while GSAP had made commits in the past couple of months.

I ended up using GSAP and haven’t regretted my decision!

How about you? Does any of this square with how you evaluate and compare front-end tooling? Are there other priorities you might have considered (e.g. accessibility, etc.) in a project like this? Or do you have a project where you had to pare down your choices from a bunch of different options? Please share in the comments because I’d like to know! 

Oh, and if you want to see how it looks when animating a whole deck of cards, you can head over to my site and play a game of Solitaire. Have fun!

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Help Shape the Future of CSS-Tricks!

Hey, so it’s been a minute since we announced that CSS-Tricks is now part of the DigitalOcean family. Things are pretty much business as usual and hopefully it feels that way to you, too. Now that we’re getting settled, we’re eager to start poking at the future of this site.

What sort of things are we poking at? Well, that’s where you come in. You see, there’s no shortage of ideas for CSS-Tricks, but we only want to work on things that continue to make CSS-Tricks one of the spots you come to time and again for all things front-end (including actual CSS tricks).

So, we put together a short little survey for you. Nothing crazy, just a few questions to help us vet those ideas and ultimately shape the future of CSS-Tricks.

Take the survey!

Thanks so much for your help! And while I have you, thanks for continuing to hang with us. In the seven years I’ve been working here at CSS-Tricks, I know this site wouldn’t even be here today without y’all. Here’s to the future of CSS-Tricks and learning together!

CSS-Tricks Newsletter

Oh, and one more update for all of you who miss the newsletter: it will be back! But we had to drop a ton of you off the list (seriously, like 80% of all subscribers) to be compliant with legal stuff that’s over my head. No worries, though, because you can re-subscribe right down here with your email address.

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My Dumbest CSS Mistakes

We all make mistakes in our code. It happens! I know if I had one of those “Days Since Last Mistake” signs hanging over my desk, a big ol’ goose egg would be hovering above me all the time. It doesn’t have to be big mistakes, either. My clumsy self has committed small errors to repos ranging from typos all the way to complete npm module directories.

Whooooooops.

That’s one of the things I really love about CSS: it’s forgiving as heck. If it doesn’t understand a typo, it keeps looking up the cascade in search of a match. None of that stuff where one out of place characters breaks a site and takes no prisoners. But it’s still embarrassing when CSS mistakes pop up!

Like this one I find myself making way more times than I’d like to admit:

.element {
  display: flexbox; /* 🤦‍♂️ */
}

Or when I try setting a gradient without a background property:

.gradient {
  linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(50% 100% 90%), rgb(62% 85% 93%));
}

I hate how close X and C are on a keyboard because I can’t count how many times I’m blazing through something and mistake px for pc units.

.element {
  font-size: 16pc; /* I meant pixels! */
}

Another CSS mistake I catch every so often is one I know many other folks make because I spot it too often in blog posts with code snippets:

// This is not a CSS comment.
.element {
  /* This is a CSS comment. */
}

Have you ever forgotten to use var() around a CSS variable? I sure have.

.element {
  color: --primary-color;
}

Speaking of CSS variables, naming them is hard (like everything else) and I often use some incorrect version of a variable that I named!

:root {
  --color-primary: #FF5722;
  --color-secondary: #3E2723;
}

/* Much later on... */

.element {
  color: var(--primary-color); /* 🙃 */
}

Yes, I have indeed copied a snippet of CSS before only to have fancy quotes get in the way of making it work:

.element::before {
  content: “”; /* Should be "" */
}

And, yes, I have spent way too long figuring out those quotes were the culprit.

Looking at that last one reminds me that I sometimes forget to set the content property when I’m working with ::before or ::after. Which reminds me of how I’ve forgotten to set an element’s position before trying to offset it or change its z-index. Seriously, these things happen!

It’s hard talking about mistakes

Have you ever finished reading some blog post sharing some amazing trick and felt some sort of Imposter Syndrome? I think that’s largely because blog posts often mask the real work — and failures — that go into amazing tricks. As someone who reads posts like that for a living, I can tell you that many, if not the vast majority, go through many rounds of editing where potentially embarrassing mistakes are weeded out and smoothed over.

Even those ridiculously awesome articles have to fail before they get all those ooooos and ahhhhhs.

The same is true of any app, website, demo, or whatever you happen to come across. The chances any of them came out perfect the first time is next to nothin’.

But if I’m being totally honest with you, I’m often more amazed (and interested) in the journey it takes to accomplish something, warts and all. The journey is a glimpse into what it’s like to think like a front-end developer. That’s where real (and most valuable) learning happens.

And all of this is merely building up to what I really want to ask…

What are your dumbest CSS mistakes?

C’mon, we all know you’ve made some! Let us learn from them!

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Great (and Free!) Web Development Books You Can Get Online

Right after “Where is the best place to learn?” perhaps the most commonly asked question I hear from folks getting into code is “What web development books should I get to learn?” Well, consider this an answer to that question as I’ve curated a list of books that are not only great for getting into front-end development but also freely available.

Table of Contents

1. Books on CSS
2. Books on HTML & CSS
3. Books on process
4. Books on JavaScript
5. Wrapping up

Books on CSS

This is the bulk of where we’re going to hang out because, well, this is a site mostly about CSS!

The Magic of CSS by Adam Schwartz

• Perfect for: Next steps in your CSS journey
• Learning level: Intermediate
• Requires: Some basic understanding of CSS

Adam Schwartz covers six CSS concepts in this book, including the box model, layout, tables, color, typography, and transitions. These are things even stump some seasoned CSSers, some of these concepts might be confusing. Adam has gone to a great length to demystify each.

In addition to the book being a great primer on complex CSS concepts, I love how each of the CSS properties mentioned throughout the book is clickable so you can always click on them to see how each is applied. There are many illustrative examples and recommendations for further reading, should you desire to learn more about each chapter.

I found the chapter on colors very interesting not only because it gets into the best practices for using color accessibly, but also because there’s super practical applications, like when Adam gets into using CSS to support an organization’s branding.

Direct link

Resilient Web Design by Jeremy Keith

• Perfect for: Developing strategies for writing code
• Learning level: Intermediate
• Requires: Some basic understanding of CSS

Straight from the introduction:

You won’t find any code in here to help you build better websites. But you will find ideas and approaches. Ideas are more resilient than code. I’ve tried to combine the most resilient ideas from the history of web design into an approach for building the websites of the future.

What Jeremy does so well is describing soft skills, like planning, outlining, and approaches for writing code. So, rather than dropping in code snippets throughout the book, what you’ll find are details about code strategies, such as progressive enhancement, deciding on what tooling to use, and the challenges of writing future-friendly code.

And for those of you who have not had the pleasure of listening to Jeremy narrate content (like he does in the Web History series), there’s an audio file available to download.

Direct link

Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional by Simon Collison

• Perfect for: The fundamentals of CSS
• Learning level: Absolute beginners
• Requires: Nothing but time and motivation

It may be written in 2006, but Simon’s coverage of web standards and accessibility is timeless and relevant today. He provides an understanding of interoperability as well as approaches for building web applications, including the early planning phases that often go overlooked.

The book has two broad parts which are further divided into 16 chapters. Part 1 covers CSS topics, like working with text, links, lists, backgrounds, images, tables, and forms. It really doesn’t skimp on the details either.

Part 2 is all about layout, shedding light on usability and layout manipulation, plus a handy case study. The chapters are arranged in such a way that one chapter naturally flows into the next. Each chapter also contains a concluding section that highlights all the important concepts covered in the chapter.

Indeed, the book provides novice developers a solid background in CSS and helps them gradually with more advanced concepts. It will make your CSS journey easier.

Direct link

Books on HTML & CSS

CSS and HTML are often taught together, which can be especially helpful when you’re writing your first lines of code and want to know how the two languages interact with one another.

Learn to Code HTML & CSS by Shay Howe

• Perfect for: Starting your front-end journey
• Learning level: Beginners
• Requires: No prior experience at all

Shay refers to this book as a simple and comprehensive guide dedicated to helping beginners learn HTML and CSS. He does this by focusing on common elements of front-end design and development. Some of the lessons covered are Box Model, Positioning, Typography, Background and Gradients, Lists, Media, Forms, and Tables. In the first chapter *Building Your First Web Page, Shay analyzed the contents of a typical website including elements, attributes and setting up the HTML document structure, code validation, selectors and CSS resets. I find the book very instructive especially as it went beyond the surface to address many key concepts with code samples, which you can follow along.

One profound thing about this great book is that, Shay built a complete project from scratch throughout the 12 lessons and at the end of each lesson, he provided a summary and links to the current state of that website (so you can compare with yours if you follow along) and the source code at every stage of the lessons.

If you’re a learner who learns by doing, you will find this material very useful and by the time you’re done, you will have developed a multi page functional website.

An advanced sequel of the course is also available free via the same link.

Direct link

HTML & CSS: Learn the Fundamentals in 7 Days by Michael Knapp

• Perfect for: Starting your front-end journey
• Learning level: Beginners
• Requires: No prior experience at all

Can you possibly learn everything there is to know about the HTML and CSS in seven days? Probably not, but that’s why this 2017 book by Michael Knapp is focused straight on the fundamentals. Michael delves into a brief history lesson before launching into HTML and CSS structure, logic, and presentation. You’re going to get all up to speed to the point where you should feel pretty confident about putting a basic webpage together, plus a few extras along the way as the book touches on SEO and analytics.

The book is comprised of simple programs that you can run on your computer if you wish to follow along.

The ebook version is available for free on Apple Books, but there is a Kindle version as well if you already have a subscription there.

Apple Books

Kindle

The Greatest CSS Tricks Vol. 1 by Chris Coyier

• Perfect for: Marveling at what CSS can do
• Learning level: Intermediate
• Requires: Some CSS experience

Did you know that CSS-Tricks has a book on CSS too? It would be silly to leave that off this list because what you get is a collection of classic CSS trickery that’s explained by none other than Chris Coyier. In fact, Chris handpicked all of the examples covered in the book from his many, many (many!) years running this here site from the plentitude of tricks that have crossed his desk.

Each trick solves a particular pain point. For instance, the first “Pin Scrolling to Bottom” trickdemonstrates how the overflow-anchor CSS property can be used to create the same chat-like interface of a tool like Slack, where the screen is anchored at the bottom in a way that feels as though the page is scrolling for you as new items are added.

Direct Link

Books on process

Code is just as much about how we write code and collaborate on projects with others as it is about the actual code we write. The following books are great starting points for everything from planning and project management to communicating and collaborating with others.

Collaborate: Bring People Together Around Digital Projects by Ellen De Vries

• Perfect for: Being a better collaborator
• Learning level: N/A
• Requires: An open mind to working well with others!

Ellen addresses something in this book that we all have to deal with: collaborating with others. And it’s no small deal — the book is divided into four parts that go super deep into things we can go to work well with others:

• Know how to prepare the ground and create the right conditions for collaboration.
• Nurture the group culture in the early stages of collaboration.
• Maintain a healthy collaborative process.
• Reap the rewards of a collaboration.

As a content strategist, Ellen has the right kind of experience to help anyone be part of a collaborative project, or get the most from a collaboration.

Direct link

The Modern Web Design Process by webflow

• Perfect for: Senior designers, project managers
• Learning level: N/A
• Requires: Some basic understanding of CSS

This free ebook features a seven-step design process that’s meant to help define the workflow for today’s brand of web design.

That includes:

• Setting goals
• Defining scope
• Sitemaps and wireframes
• Working with content
• Handling visual elements
• Testing
• Shipping

Anyone starting a new design project or in the middle of a design project will find the invaluable insights throughout the book. And what’s most remarkable is how this is written in a way that almost feels as though you are being hand-held through an entire project from concept to completion.

Direct link

Designing for the Web by Mark Boulton

• Perfect for: Learning to work with clients
• Learning level: Beginners
• Requires: A genuine interest in design

It seems many organizations tackle design differently. But author Mark Boulton documents a thorough design workflow in Designing for the Web that de-mystifies many challenges and covers everything you need to know.

What’s unique about this book is that it’s really about work. Sure, there’s a bunch of hugely valuable information on design best practices for things like typography, color, and layout, but what you’re really going to take away from this book is how these fit into a design workflow. It teaches you how to research, the technologies we have to implement ideas, and ultimately, how to work with others as well as clients — perfect fodder for folks including design leads, project managers, freelancers, or anyone who’s involved in the project delivery process.

Direct Link

Learn Version Control with Git by Tower

• Perfect for: Mastering Git
• Learning level: All levels welcome
• Requires: No prior knowledge at all

In this book, the team behind the popular Tower client for Git introduce learners to the crux of version control system using Git. Developers who work in teams will particularly find this very useful, as it helps in effectively collaborating with team members building different features of a project even when you’re thousands of miles apart. That said, it’s still really great for anyone who might be shy of the command line and wants to build confidence there.

And since the book is by the maker of an application that interacts with Git, you’re going to get a nice dose of using Tower as a GUI in addition to working directly on the command line.

So, whether it’s committing, branching, merging, pull requests, forking work, or handling merge conflicts, you’re going to get a whole lot from this book.

Direct Link

Books on JavaScript

Learning JavaScript always seems to be en vogue. In fact, Jason Rodriguez wrote about the JavaScript learning landscape in 2018 and provided a nice list of free books. Not too much has cropped up since then, but here are my thoughts on the following books.

Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke

• Perfect for: Getting better at writing JavaScript
• Learning level: Intermediate to seasoned developers
• Requires: Prior JavaScript experience

Eloquent JavaScript really lives up to its name. Personally, I consider this one of the best-written JavaScript books I have ever come across. Marjin’s writing style is engaging, especially with how he introduces programming concepts and carries the reader along. In his words, the book is simply about instructing computers and making them do what you want them to do.

The book is a deep dive into JavaScript spread across three parts and 21 chapters. You’re going to read a bunch about basic programming concepts, such as values, types, operators and functions, to advanced concepts like regular expressions, modules, the DOM, and asynchronous programming. He starts every chapter with a somewhat philosophical quote to prepare the reader for what lies ahead and then dives straight into the topic.

Plus, there’s three projects to help you practice your newfound skills.

Direct link

Understanding JavaScript Promises by Nicholas C. Zakas

• Perfect for: Those who want to learn all about asynchronous programming with promises in JavaScript.
• Learning level: Intermediate
• Requires: Basic JavaScript chops

JavaScript promises were introduced in 2015 as part of the ES6 specification to handle asynchronous functions in JavaScript. According to MDN:

A promise is an object representing the eventual completion or failure of an asynchronous operation

In this 51-page book, Nicholas explains the concept of Promises over three chapters: Basics, Chaining Promises, and Working with Multiple Promises. Although the link to the book we’re providing is the free community version, the full version (available on Amazon) has two more chapters on Async Functions and Unhandled Rejection Tracking. Nicholas simplified the concept of Promises with several illustrations and examples. You will learn how to use then(), catch(), and finally() and understand how to chain multiple promises together. Nicholas also covers the assignment of rejection and settlement handlers. You may want to give the book a read to solidify your understanding of the topic.

Nicholas is a veteran JavaScript book author who has been writing about JavaScript for over 15 years. He brings his wealth of experience to bear in this book (just as he has in his work here at CSS-Tricks).

Direct link

Speaking JavaScript by Alex Rauschmayer

• Perfect for: Leveling up from beginning JavaScript
• Learning level: Intermediate
• Requires: Knowledge of object oriented programming

This book is presented in four chapters covering more than 30 topics. Here’s how it breaks down:

1. The first chapter is a nice refresher on syntax, variable types, functions and exception handling.
2. The second chapter offers historical perspective into JavaScript as a prelude for the types of features covered throughout the rest of the book.
3. Chapter 3 is presented as more or less a reference book with short, clean examples.
4. The final chapter outlines tips, tools and libraries to help write better JavaScript and follow best practices.

Direct Link

Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig and Bear Bibeault

• Perfect for: Creating a cross-browser JavaScript library from the ground up
• Learning level: Intermediate
• Requires: Some prior programming experience

There’s actually a newer edition of this book, but the 2012 edition is the one that’s free. Either way, it’s a good opportunity to learn from John Resig; you know, the guy who created jQuery.

The techniques covered here include closures, functions, the DOM, object orientation with prototypes, and cross-browser strategies. One nice perk is that each chapter is followed by a brief recap that’s perfect for a reference once you’ve finished the book.

Direct Link

Learning JavaScript Design Patterns by Addy Osmani

• Perfect for: Learning to write more efficient JavaScript
• Learning level: Intermediate
• Requires: A decent level of JavaScript experience

The concept of design pattern refers to a reusable solution to a commonly recurring problem in application development. In this book, Addy Osmani covers the implementation of common design patterns using ES6 and beyond, as well as React-specific design patterns, which can be super handy when working on complex React apps where maintainability is a primary goal.

Some of the patterns covered include Singleton, Proxy, Provider, Prototype and Observer patterns. In some cases, Addy includes pros and cons of using some of these patterns and how they may affect the performance of your application.

Direct Link

You Don’t Know JS by Kyle Simpson

• Perfect for: Mastering JavaScript
• Learning level: Beginner
• Requires: Little or no prior programming experience

While the title might be a bit provocative, what Kyle is implying here is that he writes this book assuming you have no prior JavaScript experience whatsoever.

Kyle begins starts by going through the rudiments of programming as seen through the lens of JavaScript. He then proceeds, in subsequent chapters, to introduce more advanced concepts like scope and closure, the this keyword, object prototypes, async, and performance.

There’s a lot of excellent details and explanations in here, and Kyle makes it super easy to understand by avoiding super technical jargon. There is also many exercises designed to reinforce your learning. This book will definitely get you up to speed with JavaScript. There’s second edition of the book in the works that you can track in GitHub.

Direct link

The JavaScript Beginner’s Handbook by Flavio Copes

• Perfect for: A beginner’s reference
• Learning level: Just getting started
• Requires: Email sign-up, maybe some prior experience

Flavio has put together a very useful JavaScript reference for those just starting out. It’s more like a quick reference guide than a textbook, so those of you just starting out might want to consider this as something you keep on your desk rather than something you sit with for long periods of time.

Direct link

JavaScript for Data Science by Gans, Hodges & Wilson

• Perfect for: Getting into data visualizations
• Learning level: Intermediate to advanced
• Requires: A decent handle on JavaScript

The authors cover core features of modern JavScript, including callbacks, promises, inheritance, objects and classes. They also get into testing using Mocha, React, and data vizualization, all of which are great for anyone looking to level up their code and how its written. The book doesn’t get as deep into many the concepts as some of the other books, but it really shines when it gets into data science.

The book uses Data-Forge; a JavaScript library designed for working with tabular data. There are numerous exercises to help readers keep up to speed with the subject of discussion. The last chapter also includes a capstone project that pulls everything together.

Direct Link

Wrapping up

I sure hope this collection of books help you, whether you’re taking your first steps in front-end web development, have a dozen years under or belt, or you fall somewhere in between. I know how hard it is to get into something new for the first time and the feeling of not knowing where to look. I also know how it feels to hit a plateau and need something to level me up. There should be something for everyone here, regardless of where you are in your learning journey.

And, hey, if you have any other books that are available to snag for free online, please share them in the comments! I bet we can get an even bigger list going.

---

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Single Element Loaders: The Bars

We’ve looked at spinners. We’ve looked at dots. Now we’re going to tackle another common pattern for loaders: bars. And we’re going to do the same thing in this third article of the series as we have the others by making it with only one element and with flexible CSS that makes it easy to create variations.

Article series

• Single Element Loaders: The Spinner
• Single Element Loaders: The Dots
• Single Element Loaders: The Bars — you are here
• Single Element Loaders: Going 3D — coming July 1

Let’s start with not one, not two, but 20 examples of bar loaders.

What?! Are you going to detail each one of them? That’s too much for an article!

It might seem like that at first glance! But all of them rely on the same code structure and we only update a few values to create variations. That’s all the power of CSS. We don’t learn how to create one loader, but we learn different techniques that allow us to create as much loader as we want using merely the same code structure.

Let’s make some bars!

We start by defining the dimensions for them using width (or height) with aspect-ratio to maintain proportion:

.bars {
  width: 45px;
  aspect-ratio: 1;
}

We sort of “fake” three bars with a linear gradient on the background — very similar to how we created dot loaders in Part 2 of this series.

.bars {
  width: 45px;
  aspect-ratio: 1;
  --c: no-repeat linear-gradient(#000 0 0); /* we define the color here */
  background: 
    var(--c) 0%   50%,
    var(--c) 50%  50%,
    var(--c) 100% 50%;
  background-size: 20% 100%; /* 20% * (3 bars + 2 spaces) = 100% */
}

The above code will give us the following result:

Like the other articles in this series, we are going to deal with a lot of background trickery. So, if you ever feel like we’re jumping around too fast or feel you need a little more detail, please do check those out. You can also read my Stack Overflow answer where I give a detailed explanation on how all this works.

Animating the bars

We either animate the element’s size or position to create the bar loader. Let’s animate the size by defining the following animation keyframes:

@keyframes load {
  0%   { background-size: 20% 100%, 20% 100%, 20% 100%; }  /* 1 */
  33%  { background-size: 20% 10% , 20% 100%, 20% 100%; }  /* 2 */
  50%  { background-size: 20% 100%, 20% 10% , 20% 100%; }  /* 3 */
  66%  { background-size: 20% 100%, 20% 100%, 20% 10%;  }  /* 4 */
  100% { background-size: 20% 100%, 20% 100%, 20% 100%; }  /* 5 */
}

See what’s happening there? Between 0% and 100%, the animation changes the background-size of the element’s background gradient. Each keyframe sets three background sizes (one for each gradient).

And here’s what we get:

Can you start to imagine all the possible variations we can get by playing with different animation configurations for the sizes or the positions?

Let’s fix the size to 20% 50% and update the positions this time:

.loader {
  width: 45px;
  aspect-ratio: .75;
  --c: no-repeat linear-gradient(#000 0 0);
  background: 
    var(--c),
    var(--c),
    var(--c);
  background-size: 20% 50%;
  animation: load 1s infinite linear;
}
@keyframes load {
  0%   { background-position: 0% 100%, 50% 100%, 100% 100%; } /* 1 */
  20%  { background-position: 0% 50% , 50% 100%, 100% 100%; } /* 2 */
  40%  { background-position: 0% 0%  , 50% 50% , 100% 100%; } /* 3 */
  60%  { background-position: 0% 100%, 50% 0%  , 100% 50%;  } /* 4 */
  80%  { background-position: 0% 100%, 50% 100%, 100% 0%;   } /* 5 */ 
  100% { background-position: 0% 100%, 50% 100%, 100% 100%; } /* 6 */
}

…which gets us another loader!

You’ve probably got the trick by now. All you need is to define a timeline that you translate into a keyframe. By animating the size, the position — or both! — there’s an infinite number of loader possibilities at our fingertips.

And once we get comfortable with such a technique we can go further and use a more complex gradient to create even more loaders.

Expect for the last two examples in that demo, all of the bar loaders use the same underlying markup and styles and different combinations of animations. Open the code and try to visualize each frame independently; you’ll see how relatively trivial it is to make dozens — if not hundreds — of variations.

Getting fancy

Did you remember the mask trick we did with the dot loaders in the second article of this series? We can do the same here!

If we apply all the above logic inside the mask property we can use any background configuration to add a fancy coloration to our loaders.

Let’s take one demo and update it:

All I did is updating all the background-* with mask-* and I added a gradient coloration. As simple as that and yet we get another cool loader.

So there is no difference between the dots and the bars?

No difference! I wrote two different articles to cover as many examples as possible but in both, I am relying on the same techniques:

1. Gradients to create the shapes (dots or bars or maybe something else)
2. Animating background-size and/or background-position to create the loader animation
3. Adding mask to add a touch of colors

Rounding the bars

Let’s try something different this time where we can round the edges of our bars.

Using one element and its ::before and ::after pseudos, we define three identical bars:

.loader {
  --s: 100px; /* control the size */

  display: grid;
  place-items: center;
  place-content: center;
  margin: 0 calc(var(--s) / 2); /* 50px */
}
.loader::before,
.loader::after {
  content: "";
  grid-area: 1/1;
}
.loader,
.loader::before,
.loader::after {
  height: var(--s);
  width: calc(var(--s) / 5); /* 20px */
  border-radius: var(--s);
  transform: translate(calc(var(--_i, 0) * 200%));
}
.loader::before { --_i: -1; }
.loader::after { --_i:  1; }

That gives us three bars, this time without relying on a linear gradient:

Now the trick is to fill in those bars with a lovely gradient. To simulate a continuous gradient, we need to play with background properties. In the above figure, the green area defines the area covered by the loader. That area should be the size of the gradient and, if we do the math, it’s equal to multiplying both sides labeled S in the diagram, or background-size: var(--s) var(--s).

Since our elements are individually placed, we need to update the position of the gradient inside each one to make sure all of them overlap. This way, we’re simulating one continuous gradient even though it’s really three of them.

For the main element (placed at the center), the background needs to be at the center. We use the following:

.loader {
  /* etc. */
  background: linear-gradient() 50% / var(--s) var(--s);
}

For the pseudo-element on the left, we need the background on the left

.loader::before {
  /* etc. */
  background: linear-gradient() 0% / var(--s) var(--s);
}

And for the pseudo on the right, the background needs to be positioned to the right:

.loader::after {
  background: linear-gradient() 100% / var(--s) var(--s);
}

Using the same CSS variable, --_i, that we used for the translate, we can write the code like this:

.loader {
  --s: 100px; /* control the size */
  --c: linear-gradient(/* etc. */); /* control the coloration */

  display: grid;
  place-items: center;
  place-content: center;
}
.loader::before,
.loader::after{
  content: "";
  grid-area: 1/1;
}
.loader,
.loader::before,
.loader::after{
  height: var(--s);
  width: calc(var(--s) / 5);
  border-radius: var(--s);
  background: var(--c) calc(50% + var(--_i, 0) * 50%) / var(--s) var(--s);
  transform: translate(calc(var(--_i, 0) * 200%));
}
.loader::before { --_i: -1; }
.loader::after  { --_i:  1; }

Now, all we have to do is to animate the height and add some delays! Here are three examples where all that’s different are the colors and sizes:

Wrapping up

I hope so far you are feeling super encouraged by all the powers you have to make complex-looking loading animations. All we need is one element, either gradients or pseudos to draw the bars, then some keyframes to move things around. That’s the entire recipe for getting an endless number of possibilities, so go out and starting cooking up some neat stuff!

Until the next article, I will leave you with a funny collection of loaders where I am combining the dots and the bars!

Article series

• Single Element Loaders: The Spinner
• Single Element Loaders: The Dots
• Single Element Loaders: The Bars — you are here
• Single Element Loaders: Going 3D — coming July 1

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Different Ways to Write CSS in React

We’re all familiar with the standard way of linking up a stylesheet to the <head> of an HTML doc, right? That’s just one of several ways we’re able to write CSS. But what does it look like to style things in a single-page application (SPA), say in a React project?

Turns out there are several ways to go about styling a React application. Some overlap with traditional styling, others not so much. But let’s count all the ways we can do it.

Importing external stylesheets

As the name suggests, React can import CSS files. The process is similar to how we link up CSS file in the HTML <head>:

1. Create a new CSS file in your project directory.
2. Write CSS.
3. Import it into the React file.

Like this:

import "./style.css";

That usually goes at the top of the file where other imports happen:

import { React } from "react";
import "./Components/css/App.css";
function App() {
  return (
    <div className="main">
    </div>
  );
}
export default App;

In this example, a CSS file is imported into an App.js from the /Components/css folder.

Write inline styles

You may be used to hearing that inline styling isn’t all that great for maintainability and whatnot, but there are definitely situations (here’s one!) where it makes sense. And maintainability is less of an issue in React, as the CSS often already sits inside the same file anyway.

This is a super simple example of inline styling in React:

<div className="main" style=>

A better approach, though, is to use objects:

1. First, create an object that contains styles for different elements.
2. Then add it to an element using the style attribute and then select the property to style.

Let’s see that in context:

import { React } from "react";
function App() {
  const styles = {
    main: {
      backgroundColor: "#f1f1f1",
      width: "100%",
    },
    inputText: {
      padding: "10px",
      color: "red",
    },
  };
  return (
    <div className="main" style={styles.main}>
      <input type="text" style={styles.inputText}></input>
    </div>
  );
}
export default App;

This example contains a styles object containing two more objects, one for the .main class and the other for a text input, which contain style rules similar to what we’d expect to see in an external stylesheet. Those objects are then applied to the style attribute of elements that are in the returned markup.

Note that curly brackets are used when referencing styles rather than the quotation marks we’d normally use in plain HTML.

Use CSS Modules

CSS Modules… what the heck happened to those, right? They have the benefit of locally scoped variables and can be used right alongside React. But what are they, again, exactly?

Quoting the repo’s documentation:

CSS Modules works by compiling individual CSS files into both CSS and data. The CSS output is normal, global CSS, which can be injected directly into the browser or concatenated together and written to a file for production use. The data is used to map the human-readable names you’ve used in the files to the globally-safe output CSS.

In simpler terms, CSS Modules allows us to use the same class name in multiple files without clashes since each class name is given a unique programmatic name. This is especially useful in larger applications. Every class name is scoped locally to the specific component in which it is being imported.

A CSS Module stylesheet is similar to a regular stylesheet, only with a different extension (e.g. styles.module.css). Here’s how they’re set up:

1. Create a file with .module.css as the extension.
2. Import that module into the React app (like we saw earlier)
3. Add a className to an element or component and reference the particular style from the imported styles.

Super simple example:

/* styles.module.css */
.font {
  color: #f00;
  font-size: 20px;
}

import { React } from "react";
import styles from "./styles.module.css";
function App() {
  return (
    <h1 className={styles.heading}>Hello World</h1>
  );
}
export default App;

Use styled-components

Have you used styled-components? It’s quite popular and allows you to build custom components using actual CSS in your JavaScript. A styled-component is basically a React component with — get ready for it — styles. Some of the features include unique class names, dynamic styling and better management of the CSS as each component has its own separate styles.

Install the styled-components npm package in the command line:

npm install styled-components

Next up, import it into the React app:

import styled from 'styled-components'

Create a component and assign a styled property to it. Note the use of template literals denoted by backticks in the Wrapper object:

import { React } from "react";
import styled from "styled-components";
function App() {
  const Wrapper = styled.div`
    width: 100%;
    height: 100px;
    background-color: red;
    display: block;
  `;
  return <Wrapper />;
}
export default App;

The above Wrapper component will be rendered as a div that contains those styles.

Conditional styling

One of the advantages of styled-components is that the components themselves are functional, as in you can use props within the CSS. This opens the door up to conditional statements and changing styles based on a state or prop.

Here’s a demo showing that off:

Here, we are manipulating the div’s display property on the display state. This state is controlled by a button that toggles the div’s state when clicked. This, in turn, toggles between the styles of two different states.

In inline if statements, we use a ? instead of the usual if/else syntax. The else part is after the semicolon. And remember to always call or use the state after it has been initialized. In that last demo, for example, the state should be above the Wrapper component’s styles.

Happy React styling!

That’s a wrap, folks! We looked at a handful of different ways to write styles in a React application. And it’s not like one is any better than the rest; the approach you use depends on the situation, of course. Hopefully now you’ve got a good understanding of them and know that you have a bunch of tools in your React styling arsenal.

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Single Element Loaders: The Dots

We’re looking at loaders in this series. More than that, we’re breaking down some common loader patterns and how to re-create them with nothing more than a single div. So far, we’ve picked apart the classic spinning loader. Now, let’s look at another one you’re likely well aware of: the dots.

Dot loaders are all over the place. They’re neat because they usually consist of three dots that sort of look like a text ellipsis (…) that dances around.

Article series

• Single Element Loaders: The Spinner
• Single Element Loaders: The Dots — you are here
• Single Element Loaders: The Bars — coming June 24
• Single Element Loaders: Going 3D — coming July 1

Our goal here is to make this same thing out of a single div element. In other words, there is no one div per dot or individual animations for each dot.

That example of a loader up above is made with a single div element, a few CSS declarations, and no pseudo-elements. I am combining two techniques using CSS background and mask. And when we’re done, we’ll see how animating a background gradient helps create the illusion of each dot changing colors as they move up and down in succession.

The background animation

Let’s start with the background animation:

.loader {
  width: 180px; /* this controls the size */
  aspect-ratio: 8/5; /* maintain the scale */
  background: 
    conic-gradient(red   50%, blue   0) no-repeat, /* top colors */
    conic-gradient(green 50%, purple 0) no-repeat; /* bottom colors */
  background-size: 200% 50%; 
  animation: back 4s infinite linear; /* applies the animation */
}

/* define the animation */
@keyframes back {
  0%,                       /* X   Y , X     Y */
  100% { background-position: 0%   0%, 0%   100%; }
  25%  { background-position: 100% 0%, 0%   100%; }
  50%  { background-position: 100% 0%, 100% 100%; }
  75%  { background-position: 0%   0%, 100% 100%; }
}

I hope this looks pretty straightforward. What we’ve got is a 180px-wide .loader element that shows two conic gradients sporting hard color stops between two colors each — the first gradient is red and blue along the top half of the .loader, and the second gradient is green and purple along the bottom half.

The way the loader’s background is sized (200% wide), we only see one of those colors in each half at a time. Then we have this little animation that pushes the position of those background gradients left, right, and back again forever and ever.

When dealing with background properties — especially background-position — I always refer to my Stack Overflow answer where I am giving a detailed explanation on how all this works. If you are uncomfortable with CSS background trickery, I highly recommend reading that answer to help with what comes next.

In the animation, notice that the first layer is Y=0% (placed at the top) while X is changes from 0% to 100%. For the second layer, we have the same for X but Y=100% (placed at the bottom).

Why using a conic-gradient() instead of linear-gradient()?

Good question! Intuitively, we should use a linear gradient to create a two-color gradients like this:

linear-gradient(90deg, red 50%, blue 0)

But we can also reach for the same using a conic-gradient() — and with less of code. We reduce the code and also learn a new trick in the process!

Sliding the colors left and right is a nice way to make it look like we’re changing colors, but it might be better if we instantly change colors instead — that way, there’s no chance of a loader dot flashing two colors at the same time. To do this, let’s change the animation‘s timing function from linear to steps(1)

The loader dots

If you followed along with the first article in this series, I bet you know what comes next: CSS masks! What makes masks so great is that they let us sort of “cut out” parts of a background in the shape of another element. So, in this case, we want to make a few dots, show the background gradients through the dots, and cut out any parts of the background that are not part of a dot.

We are going to use radial-gradient() for this:

.loader {
  width: 180px;
  aspect-ratio: 8/5;
  mask:
    radial-gradient(#000 68%, #0000 71%) no-repeat,
    radial-gradient(#000 68%, #0000 71%) no-repeat,
    radial-gradient(#000 68%, #0000 71%) no-repeat;
  mask-size: 25% 40%; /* the size of our dots */
}

There’s some duplicated code in there, so let’s make a CSS variable to slim things down:

.loader {
  width: 180px;
  aspect-ratio: 8/5;
  --_g: radial-gradient(#000 68%, #0000 71%) no-repeat;
  mask: var(--_g),var(--_g),var(--_g);
  mask-size: 25% 40%;
}

Cool cool. But now we need a new animation that helps move the dots up and down between the animated gradients.

.loader {
  /* same as before */
  animation: load 2s infinite;
}

@keyframes load {      /* X  Y,     X   Y,    X   Y */
  0%     { mask-position: 0% 0%  , 50% 0%  , 100% 0%; } /* all of them at the top */
  16.67% { mask-position: 0% 100%, 50% 0%  , 100% 0%; }
  33.33% { mask-position: 0% 100%, 50% 100%, 100% 0%; }
  50%    { mask-position: 0% 100%, 50% 100%, 100% 100%; } /* all of them at the bottom */
  66.67% { mask-position: 0% 0%  , 50% 100%, 100% 100%; }
  83.33% { mask-position: 0% 0%  , 50% 0%  , 100% 100%; }
  100%   { mask-position: 0% 0%  , 50% 0%  , 100% 0%; } /* all of them at the top */
}

Yes, that’s a total of three radial gradients in there, all with the same configuration and the same size — the animation will update the position of each one. Note that the X coordinate of each dot is fixed. The mask-position is defined such that the first dot is at the left (0%), the second one at the center (50%), and the third one at the right (100%). We only update the Y coordinate from 0% to 100% to make the dots dance.

Here’s what we get:

Now, combine this with our gradient animation and magic starts to happen:

Dot loader variations

The CSS variable we made in the last example makes it all that much easier to swap in new colors and create more variations of the same loader. For example, different colors and sizes:

What about another movement for our dots?

Here, all I did was update the animation to consider different positions, and we get another loader with the same code structure!

The animation technique I used for the mask layers can also be used with background layers to create a lot of different loaders with a single color. I wrote a detailed article about this. You will see that from the same code structure we can create different variations by simply changing a few values. I am sharing a few examples at the end of the article.

Why not a loader with one dot?

This one should be fairly easy to grok as I am using the same technique but with a more simple logic:

Here is another example of loader where I am also animating radial-gradient combined with CSS filters and mix-blend-mode to create a blobby effect:

If you check the code, you will see that all I am really doing there is animating the background-position, exactly like we did with the previous loader, but adding a dash of background-size to make it look like the blob gets bigger as it absorbs dots.

If you want to understand the magic behind that blob effect, you can refer to these interactive slides (Chrome only) by Ana Tudor because she covers the topic so well!

Here is another dot loader idea, this time using a different technique:

This one is only 10 CSS declarations and a keyframe. The main element and its two pseudo-elements have the same background configuration with one radial gradient. Each one creates one dot, for a total of three. The animation moves the gradient from top to bottom by using different delays for each dot..

Oh, and take note how this demo uses CSS Grid. This allows us to leverage the grid’s default stretch alignment so that both pseudo-elements cover the whole area of their parent. No need for sizing! Push the around a little with translate() and we’re all set.

More examples!

Just to drive the point home, I want to leave you with a bunch of additional examples that are really variations of what we’ve looked at. As you view the demos, you’ll see that the approaches we’ve covered here are super flexible and open up tons of design possibilities.

Next up…

OK, so we covered dot loaders in this article and spinners in the last one. In the next article of this four-part series, we’ll turn our attention to another common type of loader: the bars. We’ll take a lot of what we learned so far and see how we can extend them to create yet another single element loader with as little code and as much flexibility as possible.

Article series

• Single Element Loaders: The Spinner
• Single Element Loaders: The Dots — you are here
• Single Element Loaders: The Bars — coming June 24
• Single Element Loaders: Going 3D — coming July 1

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Single Element Loaders: The Dots originally published on CSS-Tricks. You should get the newsletter.

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