Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos

David asked me if I'd be up for a guest post picking out some of my favorite Pens from CodePen. A daunting task! There are so many! I managed to pick a few though that have blown me away over the past few months. If you just can't get enough, I heart a bunch of Pens every day and reserve my triple hearted Pens for my absolute favorites.

Whale

I love the simplicity of this one. When you think about how it's made, it's just some shapes stacked on top of each other that follow the mouse around. But timing and the shading and responsiveness and everything makes it so satisfying to play with.

See the Pen Whale | SVG & JS by Diego Leme (@diegoleme) on CodePen

Avgrund

Hakim's demos are always so perfect it's hard to pick one. I think I like this one because of how practical it is. I'm not sure I've ever seen a modal window accomplish the visual trompe l'oeil of depth so well.

See the Pen Avgrund by Hakim El Hattab (@hakimel) on CodePen

Tearable Cloth

I believe this is our most popular Pen ever on CodePen with going on 1.5 million views. And for good reason. It's rather amazing how "real" interacting with it feels - with the gravity and the swaying and how the fabric folds up on itself and tears and falls to the floor and everything.

See the Pen Tear-able Cloth by suffick (@stuffit) on CodePen

Ribbon

Justin Windle also creates spine-tingling interactions. It is easy to feel good about the future of the web platform when you see stuff like this performing so smoothly.

See the Pen Ribbon by Justin Windle (@soulwire) on CodePen

Light Loader

I'm a sucker for particle demos, but especially when they have a practical twist to them like this progress bar indicator by Jack Rugile. I'd wait all day for a page to load with that baby.

See the Pen Light Loader by Jack Rugile (@jackrugile) on CodePen

Mechanical Grass

This Tim Holman Pen just immediately transports me to some other worldly place. Like a steampunk Alice in Wonderland or something.

See the Pen Mechanical Grass by Tim Holman (@tholman) on CodePen

Personal Page

I felt really good about CodePen when I saw this Pen by Tim Pietrusky:

I spend my online time chatting with the 4ae9b8 team. We found each other through CodePen. Hugo Giraudel, Mads Cordes (>:D), Sara Soueidan, Ana Tudor, Fabrice Weinberg & Joshua Hibbert. A really awesome group of people to spend the timewith. I ❤ you guys!

See the Pen "Tell us something about you" by Tim Pietrusky (@TimPietrusky) on CodePen

Twitter Button Concept

3D CSS effects can be simple, classy, and effective like Bennett Feely proves here.

See the Pen Twitter Button Concept by Erik Deiner by Bennett Feely (@bennettfeely) on CodePen

Triangle Optical Illusion

Ana Tudor is great at instructional programming, where she reveals how it is done through the visual demo itself. This tricky old optical illusion is one of my favorite fun examples of that.

See the Pen Now how does this happen? :) by Ana Tudor (@thebabydino) on CodePen

A huge thank you to Chris for sharing his favorite pens! It's really great to get his take on the work being featured on his platform. I hope you enjoyed his favorites and hit CodePen to find a few of your own! I also hope you are inspired to add your own awesomeness to CodePen so he picks your pen next time!

About Chris Coyier

Designer at CodePen. Writer at CSS-Tricks. Podcaster at ShopTalk

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