CSS Background Animations

Discussion

1. MaxArt

   May I suggest to use multiple background images to create a cool parallax effect in that cloud background?
2. Siti Web Monza

   Easy and efficient! Thanks for this css trick!
3. Pandi

   wow .. very awesome animation friend ,,,,,,,,, i love it .
4. Benedict Lewis

   Wow, great post and very thorough. Out of interest, where did you get the cloud image from? I did a similar tutorial on my blog about using CSS sprites to create a basic button. I guess using the same idea you could even animate the background of the button.
5. David

   As MaxArt suggested, having multiple (small in file-size) backgrounds could create a cool effect. So I experimented! Check it out: http://www.creativewebgroup.co.uk/library/background.html
6. David Pottrell

   As MaxArt suggested, having multiple (small in file-size) backgrounds could create a cool effect. So I experimented!

   Check it out: http://www.creativewebgroup.co.uk/library/background.html
• David

  My apologies for the multiple post! Browser wouldn’t load the comment!
7. minhyung

   cool, But the many paint calls happen ~ during animation
8. Bennett Feely

   For this example and many others, the “from” keyframe is not needed. This works just as well:

   @keyframes animatedBackground {
       to { background-position-x:100%; }
   }
• James Jensen

  @Bennett_Feely: Found this on the official Mozilla site, which states that the “from” keyframe is most definitely needed:

  Valid keyframe lists

  In order for a keyframe list to be valid, it must include rules for at least the times 0% (or from) and 100% (or to) (that is, the starting and ending states of the animation). If both of these time offsets aren’t specified, the keyframe declaration is invalid; as such, it will be ignored by the parser and can’t be used for animation.
9. Cmorales

   Very nice tutorial. Your article, and MaxArt’s comment, encouraged me to create my own version, with parallax effect:

   Demo:
   http://demo.cmorales.es/background-animation/prefixed.html

   Tutorial (in Spanish):
   http://cmorales.es/tutorial/fondo-animado-con-css3/
10. Hardeep Asrani

    great tutorial..going to try it for sure :)
11. mick

    where do you put the first piece of code?
• Razvan

  In CSS of course ;)
12. Priyank Rathod

    Hey David,

    This is indeed an awesome post. I tried it and it felt really cool.

    However, when i expanded the width to say 1000 or 2000 to fit the screen width, the animation restarts from the 1st frame creating a start effect after some seconds and it doesn’t look like a seamless flow of animation. I hope you got me.

    Try increasing the width and reducing the animation time(seconds). :)
13. Vincent

    I had the same problem with the stutter when the image reached the end and started over (as described by Priyank Rathod). The problem is either the width of the div or the image itself. You have to create the image in such a way that when it reaches the end within its div (or whatever – in my case it was a TD), it looks exactly as it would as if it were still at the beginning. You essentially have to define the width of the div and create the image to be the exact same width – minus the borders of the div – and the left side of the image has to connect to the right side seamlessly. (I also removed the width and height specs from the css but not sure if that made a difference.)
14. Gupta Anirudha

    Nice trick, looking awesome to me.

    What about the animation done in background all over the page. I means if Image goes smaller then the size of monitor then maybe some trouble will happen.
15. iker

    apology, I came out excellent animation, unfortunately you can only see in firefox, and I can not see it or tablet or chrome, there is a kit for the other browsers, or in this case you could do, you and I hope your answer is urgent
16. Amit

    why this is not working in chrome? can anybody explain? only working in the FF. Thanks in advance.
17. Amit

    ops. fixed it :)

    @-webkit-keyframes animatedBackground{
    	from { background-position: 0 0; }
    	to { background-position: 100% 0; }
    }
    

    how fool i was. thanks for this David. much appreciated.
18. Will

    Cool, but on old computers like mine it goes 90% CPU
19. Noah

    I have tried this out with an animation that extends the full width of the browser it works fine unless your on a big screen when you extend it outwards to full width it then goes from left to right! How do I stop that from happening?
    Thanks,
20. Fabricio

    Hi, I used this code on my website’s footer and it works perfectly except it stops for a bit after a while as if it’s starting again. I’m not sure why, anyone can help me fix this bug? Check the dark bottom footer: http://www.alpinaweb.com.br/v1/

    I want it to look very smooth. Thanks a lot.
21. hyperdunc

    Here’s one way to stop the animation skipping if you are using a larger div with a width of 100% document size:

    Set the div’s css background-size property to a multiple of the div’s width that is close to the image’s width.

    For example, with a div width of 1265px, I set:

    background-size: 2530px;

    2530px = 1265px x 2, which is slightly larger than my image width of 2247px.

    If you use a responsive layout, you’ll need to set background-size using javascript each time the document is re-sized.
22. Ian

    Is it possible to use translate(x,y) on this?
23. Vinay

    This is fantastic & very useful method however when using large background images with more than 60s animation time the animation becomes really really choppy… I’m trying to use translate(x,y) but have been able to apply it to only one image but it would be so great if it can be applied to all backgrounds to get a really smooth animation.
24. Dude

    Hi,

    when using

    @keyframes animatedBackground {
    	to { background-position: 100% 0; }
    }

    you may get 2 problems. The animation skipping when it loops and the speed of the animation is depending on the size of the window/element.

    I recommend using:

    @keyframes animatedBackground {
    	to { background-position: 250 0; }
    }

    where 250px is the width of the picture.
    This way it will loop seamless and the animation won’t be faster on smaller screens.
25. Ryan Weiss

    NOTE: If you want to use this on a 100% width element (such as the entire background of your site), you need to make a small modification.

    The width of your container should be 100% (ie. the body in this case).
    The ‘to’ position of the keyframe animation needs to be set to the negative value (if scrolling left, otherwise positive value) of the width of your image. This will prevent ‘glitching’ when the image reaches the end of it’s “wrap”, but the container still has space left over.

    For instance:

    @-webkit-keyframes animatedBackground {
        from { background-position: 0 0; }
        to { background-position: -2336px 0; }
    }
    .main-pane { 
        width: 100%; 
        height: 768px;
        background-image: url(../img/blurred_clouds2.png);
        background-position: 0px 0px;
        background-repeat: repeat-x;
    
        animation: animatedBackground 4s linear infinite;
        -ms-animation: animatedBackground 4s linear infinite;
        -moz-animation: animatedBackground 4s linear infinite;
        -webkit-animation: animatedBackground 4s linear infinite;
    }
    

    Hope that helps anyone trying to do this on width: 100% element.
26. Suphicha

    quick question! does this CSS works on phone? Thanks!
27. david

    Hi David
    Great resource you have here helping guys with codes et all.
    I tried to add the animated background to heade section of css style on my website, ( width is 960px height 300px) it didnt work and i tried the css multiple animated background it didnt help.
    I am using adobe dreamweaver 4.
    Please kindly do assist
• Ryan Weiss

  David,

  Here is code that I was able to get working, which animates the entire background of the page.

  @-webkit-keyframes animatedBackground {
      from { background-position: 0 0; }
      to { background-position: -2336px 0; }
  }
  
  /* note that the background image I'm using is 2336px wide (as defined above also) */
  .container { 
      position: absolute;
      top: 0px;
      width: 100%; 
      height: 768px;
      z-index: 0;
      background-image: url(../img/blurred_clouds_des.png);
      background-position: 0px 0px;
      background-repeat: repeat-x;
      min-width: 500px;
  
      animation: animatedBackground 60s linear infinite;
      -ms-animation: animatedBackground 60s linear infinite;
      -moz-animation: animatedBackground 60s linear infinite;
      -webkit-animation: animatedBackground 60s linear infinite;
  }
  
28. Joris

    Nice,

    I’m experimenting with it… Using

    @keyframes animatedBackground {
    	from { background-position: -55% 90%; }
    	to { background-position: 155% 90%; }
    }
    

    I used negative and over 100 percentage to get the image out of screen-border. Will try the other methods later.

    And i used

    @media (min-width: 1100px) {
    
     }
    
    

    To only use it on big screens.

    Still experimenting… But fun..
29. Kurt

    Is there no way to stop the image from reloading and restarting the animation?
    It should be as smooth as the demo but it wont work with “real” clouds.
30. Todd

    Is there a way to make the background image clickable so that if clicked it will go to a linked page or site?
31. Ercik

    There any way to stop the animation with JS?

    I need to add a button to stop the animation background, I could help with an example. Thank you very much =)
32. Oğuzhan isa Temiz

    OMG thank you ! but on old computers like mine it goes 90% CPU
33. J Glendening

    Personally I feel this example misleads the reader. It appears to show a background seamlessly repeating using this css. Only after trying to use it myself (and time spent trying to figure out why my background was jumping at the end, unlike the example) did I discover that effect comes from a specially chosen div width and background image combination (the displayed div width is 560px and first and last 560px of the image are identical) – as from now reading the comments was previously found by Priyank Rathod. I personally would never post such code without indicating the special conditions which give the effect.
34. Serdar

    I have tried this out with an animation that extends the full width of the browser it works fine unless your on a big screen when you extend it outwards to full width it then goes from left to right! How do I stop that from happening?
    Thanks,
35. karton bardak

    Hi, OMG thank you ! but on old computers like mine it goes 75% CPU
36. instafollowers

    Hi, OMG thank you ! but on old computers like mine it goes 75% CPU. This cause some problem