As CSS3 has started gaining more popularity and more browsers are starting to support it, many common interactions that you would expect from a website that were created using JavaScript are now being replaced by pure CSS solutions. Today I’ll show you how to create an animated content tab using only CSS.
Disclaimer: The purpose of this post is to show you the possibilities of CSS3. The content may or may not be practical to use in real life.
[tut demo=”https://onextrapixel.com/examples/pure-css-tab-with-fade-animation/” download=”https://onextrapixel.com/examples/pure-css-tab-with-fade-animation/pure-css-tab-with-fade-animation.zip”]
Creating Content Tabs with Pure CSS
HTML:
<ul class="tabs">
<li>
<input type="radio" checked name="tabs" id="tab1">
<label for="tab1">tab 1</label>
<div id="tab-content1" class="tab-content animated fadeIn">
...
</div>
</li>
<li>
<input type="radio" name="tabs" id="tab2">
<label for="tab2">tab 2</label>
<div id="tab-content2" class="tab-content animated fadeIn">
...
</div>
</li>
<li>
<input type="radio" name="tabs" id="tab3">
<label for="tab3">tab 3</label>
<div id="tab-content3" class="tab-content animated fadeIn">
...
</div>
</li>
</ul>
CSS:
body, html {
height: 100%;
margin: 0;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
font-weight: 100;
background: #aadfeb;
text-align: center;
font-family: helvetica;
}
.tabs input[type=radio] {
position: absolute;
top: -9999px;
left: -9999px;
}
.tabs {
width: 650px;
float: none;
list-style: none;
position: relative;
padding: 0;
margin: 75px auto;
}
.tabs li{
float: left;
}
.tabs label {
display: block;
padding: 10px 20px;
border-radius: 2px 2px 0 0;
color: #08C;
font-size: 24px;
font-weight: normal;
font-family: 'Lily Script One', helveti;
background: rgba(255,255,255,0.2);
cursor: pointer;
position: relative;
top: 3px;
-webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
-moz-transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
-o-transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
}
.tabs label:hover {
background: rgba(255,255,255,0.5);
top: 0;
}
[id^=tab]:checked + label {
background: #08C;
color: white;
top: 0;
}
[id^=tab]:checked ~ [id^=tab-content] {
display: block;
}
.tab-content{
z-index: 2;
display: none;
text-align: left;
width: 100%;
font-size: 20px;
line-height: 140%;
padding-top: 10px;
background: #08C;
padding: 15px;
color: white;
position: absolute;
top: 53px;
left: 0;
box-sizing: border-box;
-webkit-animation-duration: 0.5s;
-o-animation-duration: 0.5s;
-moz-animation-duration: 0.5s;
animation-duration: 0.5s;
}
First off, in order to replicate the functionality of JavaScript, we need to find a way to let the CSS know that the user has clicked the button. With JavaScript, we can simply add a class name on click but since we are not going to use JavaScript, we need to hack our way through this. What I did is I used a hidden radio button which is linked to a label tag through rel attribute. The label will act as a button and when you click the label, the label will trigger a “checked” attribute of that linked radio button. Now we can target our styles with a :checked selector.
From the HTML markup, you can see that I have the radio button, the label and the container at the same level. There’s a reason for this. With the help of an awesome CSS sibling combinator (~) we can have one selector triggering another same-level selector without even having it nested together. This allows us to have any radio button with a check triggering any container to appear so that it replicates the behavior of a normal content tab created with JavaScript.
In the demo, I have also included a CSS animation library created by Dan Eden to add some animation effects when the tab content appears.
[tut demo=”https://onextrapixel.com/examples/pure-css-tab-with-fade-animation/” download=”https://onextrapixel.com/examples/pure-css-tab-with-fade-animation/pure-css-tab-with-fade-animation.zip”]
Conclusion
Now you have a beautiful animated tab content for your website without even touching any JavaScript. Let me know what you think about this approach in the comments below.
