CSS Fade

By  on  

Web developers have been using fade ins and fade outs (basic opacity animation) on their website for years, but the effect needed to be accomplished using JavaScript because CSS didn't have the capability to complete animations.  The tides have turned:  CSS fading is now possible thanks to CSS transitions.  Let's take a look basic CSS fading animations!

CSS FadeIn and FadeOut

The principle behind fading is animating opacity, so the transition will address just that property:

/* fades in upon hover */
.fadeIn {
	opacity: 0;
}
.fadeIn:hover {
	opacity: 1;
}

The example above illustrates a CSS fade in, while the example below illustrates a fade out:

/* fades in upon hover */
.fadeIn {
	opacity: 1;
}
.fadeIn:hover {
	opacity: 0;
}

The examples above illustrate CSS fades during hover states, but what if you want to fade an element in or out without relying on use interactions. In this case, CSS animations are the better call:

/* basic fadein */
@keyframes fadeIn {
	0% { opacity: 0 }
	100% { opacity: 1 }
}

.fadeIn {
	animation-name: fadeIn;
	opacity: 1;
}

Add the fadeIn class to the element you'd like to fade in (via JavaScript) and the job is done! A fade out would simply be the inverse of the code above.

CSS fade animations are child's play these days.  CSS is has advanced quickly and there's no need to use JavaScript these days.  Use CSS transitions and fading is easy!

Recent Features

  • By
    Write Simple, Elegant and Maintainable Media Queries with Sass

    I spent a few months experimenting with different approaches for writing simple, elegant and maintainable media queries with Sass. Each solution had something that I really liked, but I couldn't find one that covered everything I needed to do, so I ventured into creating my...

  • By
    I’m an Impostor

    This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself.  I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life.  All of those feelings were very...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Camera and Video Control with HTML5

    Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs.  Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop.  One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

  • By
    PHP / MooTools 1.2 Accordion Helper

    The MooTools Accordion plugin seems to be the plugin that people seem to have the most problems with. It's an awesome plugin, so I can see why so many people want to use it, but I think that may be part of the problem.

Discussion

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