Firefox Marketplace Animated Buttons

By  on  

The Firefox Marketplace is an incredibly attractive, easy to use hub that promises to make finding and promoting awesome HTML5-powered web applications easy and convenient. While I don't work directly on the Marketplace, I am privy to the codebase (and so are you). One of the well written and elegant touches to the site is its animated button. They are comprised completely of CSS and achieve a great effect by animating box-shadow and line-height.

The HTML

These styles can be applied to A elements with the button class or actual BUTTON elements:

<a href="#" class="button" role="button">Arsenal Arsenal Arsenal</a>

Since BUTTON elements have had styling quirks in the past, you'll want to use A elements everywhere outside of forms.

The CSS

There's a lot of CSS in the basic element state, but I kept all of it to keep my demo true to the Marketplace button. Here's the magic:

a.button:link,
a.button:visited,
button,
input[type=submit],
input[type=button] {
	border: 0;
	color: white;
	display: inline-block;
	font: 600 16px/31px "Open Sans","Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;
	height: 32px;
	background-color: 
	#267CC2;
	padding: 0 24px;
	position: relative;
	text-align: center;
	text-decoration: none;
	text-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, .25);
	white-space: nowrap;
	border-radius: .5em;
	box-shadow: 0 2px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, .2), inset 0 -1px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, .2), inset 0 1px 0 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, .2);
	background-color: #267CC2;
	background-image: linear-gradient(#42A5E1, #267CC2);
	transition-property: -moz-box-shadow,-webkit-box-shadow,box-shadow,line-height;
	transition-duration: .2s,.2s,.2s,.2s;
}

a.button:hover,
a.button:focus,
button:hover,
button:focus,
input[type=submit]:hover,
input[type=button]:hover,
input[type=submit]:focus,
input[type=button]:focus {
    box-shadow: 0 4px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 -3px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) inset;
	line-height: 28px;
	text-decoration: none;
}

a.button:active, button.button:active {
    box-shadow: inset 0 2px 0 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, .2), inset 0 12px 24px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, .2), inset 0 0 2px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, .2);
	transition-duration: .1s,.1s,.1s,.1s;
	line-height: 34px;
}

As you can probably guess, the original CSS was generated using a preprocessor (LESS, in this case). As with any piece of expertly written code, there isn't too much to explain. The animated transition is applied to box-shadow and line-height properties and the :active and :hover states trigger the animations.

I love what the AMO and Marketplace team has done with this subtle effect. Not only is the effect smooth and unique, it requires no JavaScript and uses what have now become standard effect techniques. Love it!

Recent Features

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Do / Undo Functionality with MooTools

    We all know that do/undo functionality is a God send for word processing apps. I've used those terms so often that I think of JavaScript actions in terms of "do" an "undo." I've put together a proof of concept Do/Undo class with MooTools. The MooTools...

  • By
    Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos IV

    Did you know you can triple-heart things on CodePen? We’ve had that little not-so-hidden feature forever. You can click that little heart button on any Pen (or Project, Collection, or Post) on CodePen to show the creator a little love, but you can click it again...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!