- CSS Transitions
- Browser Support for Transitions
- How to Use CSS Transitions?
- Example
- Example
- Change Several Property Values
- Example
- Specify the Speed Curve of the Transition
- Example
- Delay the Transition Effect
- Example
- Transition + Transformation
- Example
- More Transition Examples
- Example
- Example
- CSS Transition Properties
- Using CSS transitions
- Which CSS properties can be transitioned?
- Defining transitions
- Examples
- Simple example
- Multiple animated properties example
- CSS
- When property value lists are of different lengths
- Using transitions when highlighting menus
- JavaScript examples
- Using transitions to make JavaScript functionality smooth
- Detecting the start and completion of a transition
- Specifications
- See also
- Found a content problem with this page?
CSS Transitions
CSS transitions allows you to change property values smoothly, over a given duration.
Mouse over the element below to see a CSS transition effect:
In this chapter you will learn about the following properties:
- transition
- transition-delay
- transition-duration
- transition-property
- transition-timing-function
Browser Support for Transitions
The numbers in the table specify the first browser version that fully supports the property.
Property | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
transition | 26.0 | 10.0 | 16.0 | 6.1 | 12.1 |
transition-delay | 26.0 | 10.0 | 16.0 | 6.1 | 12.1 |
transition-duration | 26.0 | 10.0 | 16.0 | 6.1 | 12.1 |
transition-property | 26.0 | 10.0 | 16.0 | 6.1 | 12.1 |
transition-timing-function | 26.0 | 10.0 | 16.0 | 6.1 | 12.1 |
How to Use CSS Transitions?
To create a transition effect, you must specify two things:
Note: If the duration part is not specified, the transition will have no effect, because the default value is 0.
The following example shows a 100px * 100px red element. The element has also specified a transition effect for the width property, with a duration of 2 seconds:
Example
The transition effect will start when the specified CSS property (width) changes value.
Now, let us specify a new value for the width property when a user mouses over the element:
Example
Notice that when the cursor mouses out of the element, it will gradually change back to its original style.
Change Several Property Values
The following example adds a transition effect for both the width and height property, with a duration of 2 seconds for the width and 4 seconds for the height:
Example
Specify the Speed Curve of the Transition
The transition-timing-function property specifies the speed curve of the transition effect.
The transition-timing-function property can have the following values:
- ease — specifies a transition effect with a slow start, then fast, then end slowly (this is default)
- linear — specifies a transition effect with the same speed from start to end
- ease-in — specifies a transition effect with a slow start
- ease-out — specifies a transition effect with a slow end
- ease-in-out — specifies a transition effect with a slow start and end
- cubic-bezier(n,n,n,n) — lets you define your own values in a cubic-bezier function
The following example shows some of the different speed curves that can be used:
Example
Delay the Transition Effect
The transition-delay property specifies a delay (in seconds) for the transition effect.
The following example has a 1 second delay before starting:
Example
Transition + Transformation
The following example adds a transition effect to the transformation:
Example
More Transition Examples
The CSS transition properties can be specified one by one, like this:
Example
div <
transition-property: width;
transition-duration: 2s;
transition-timing-function: linear;
transition-delay: 1s;
>
or by using the shorthand property transition :
Example
CSS Transition Properties
The following table lists all the CSS transition properties:
Property | Description |
---|---|
transition | A shorthand property for setting the four transition properties into a single property |
transition-delay | Specifies a delay (in seconds) for the transition effect |
transition-duration | Specifies how many seconds or milliseconds a transition effect takes to complete |
transition-property | Specifies the name of the CSS property the transition effect is for |
transition-timing-function | Specifies the speed curve of the transition effect |
Using CSS transitions
CSS transitions provide a way to control animation speed when changing CSS properties. Instead of having property changes take effect immediately, you can cause the changes in a property to take place over a period of time. For example, if you change the color of an element from white to black, usually the change is instantaneous. With CSS transitions enabled, changes occur at time intervals that follow an acceleration curve, all of which can be customized.
Animations that involve transitioning between two states are often called implicit transitions as the states in between the start and final states are implicitly defined by the browser.
CSS transitions let you decide which properties to animate (by listing them explicitly), when the animation will start (by setting a delay), how long the transition will last (by setting a duration), and how the transition will run (by defining an easing function, e.g., linearly or quick at the beginning, slow at the end).
Which CSS properties can be transitioned?
The Web author can define which property has to be animated and in which way. This allows the creation of complex transitions. However, some properties are not animatable as it doesn’t make sense to animate them.
Note: The auto value is often a very complex case. The specification recommends not animating from and to auto . Some user agents, like those based on Gecko, implement this requirement and others, like those based on WebKit, are less strict. Using animations with auto may lead to unpredictable results, depending on the browser and its version, and should be avoided.
Defining transitions
CSS Transitions are controlled using the shorthand transition property. This is the best way to configure transitions, as it makes it easier to avoid out of sync parameters, which can be very frustrating to have to spend lots of time debugging in CSS.
You can control the individual components of the transition with the following sub-properties:
Specifies the name or names of the CSS properties to which transitions should be applied. Only properties listed here are animated during transitions; changes to all other properties occur instantaneously as usual.
Specifies the duration over which transitions should occur. You can specify a single duration that applies to all properties during the transition, or multiple values to allow each property to transition over a different period of time.
Specifies a function to define how intermediate values for properties are computed. Easing functions determine how intermediate values of the transition are calculated. Most easing functions can be specified by providing the graph of the corresponding function, as defined by four points defining a cubic bezier. You can also choose easing from Easing functions cheat sheet.
Defines how long to wait between the time a property is changed and the transition actually begins.
The transition shorthand CSS syntax is written as follows:
Examples
Simple example
This example performs a four-second font size transition with a two-second delay between the time the user mouses over the element and the beginning of the animation effect:
#delay font-size: 14px; transition-property: font-size; transition-duration: 4s; transition-delay: 2s; > #delay:hover font-size: 36px; >
Multiple animated properties example
body> p> The box below combines transitions for: width, height, background-color, rotate. Hover over the box to see these properties animated. p> div class="box">Samplediv> body>
CSS
.box border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; display: block; width: 100px; height: 100px; background-color: #0000ff; transition: width 2s, height 2s, background-color 2s, rotate 2s; > .box:hover background-color: #ffcccc; width: 200px; height: 200px; rotate: 180deg; >
When property value lists are of different lengths
If any property’s list of values is shorter than the others, its values are repeated to make them match. For example:
div transition-property: opacity, left, top, height; transition-duration: 3s, 5s; >
This is treated as if it were:
div transition-property: opacity, left, top, height; transition-duration: 3s, 5s, 3s, 5s; >
Similarly, if any property’s value list is longer than that for transition-property , it’s truncated, so if you have the following CSS:
div transition-property: opacity, left; transition-duration: 3s, 5s, 2s, 1s; >
div transition-property: opacity, left; transition-duration: 3s, 5s; >
Using transitions when highlighting menus
A common use of CSS is to highlight items in a menu as the user hovers the mouse cursor over them. It’s easy to use transitions to make the effect even more attractive.
First, we set up the menu using HTML:
nav> a href="#">Homea> a href="#">Abouta> a href="#">Contact Usa> a href="#">Linksa> nav>
Then we build the CSS to implement the look and feel of our menu:
nav display: flex; gap: 0.5rem; > a flex: 1; background-color: #333; color: #fff; border: 1px solid; padding: 0.5rem; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s ease-out; > a:hover, a:focus background-color: #fff; color: #333; >
This CSS establishes the look of the menu, with the background and text colors both changing when the element is in its :hover and :focus states:
JavaScript examples
Note: Care should be taken when using a transition immediately after:
- adding the element to the DOM using .appendChild()
- removing an element’s display: none; property.
This is treated as if the initial state had never occurred and the element was always in its final state. The easy way to overcome this limitation is to apply a setTimeout() of a handful of milliseconds before changing the CSS property you intend to transition to.
Using transitions to make JavaScript functionality smooth
Transitions are a great tool to make things look much smoother without having to do anything to your JavaScript functionality. Take the following example.
p>Click anywhere to move the ballp> div id="foo" class="ball">div>
Using JavaScript you can make the effect of moving the ball to a certain position happen:
const f = document.getElementById("foo"); document.addEventListener( "click", (ev) => f.style.transform = `translateY($ev.clientY - 25>px)`; f.style.transform += `translateX($ev.clientX - 25>px)`; >, false, );
With CSS you can make it smooth without any extra effort. Add a transition to the element and any change will happen smoothly:
.ball border-radius: 25px; width: 50px; height: 50px; background: #c00; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; transition: transform 1s; >
Detecting the start and completion of a transition
You can use the transitionend event to detect that an animation has finished running. This is a TransitionEvent object, which has two added properties beyond a typical Event object:
A string indicating the name of the CSS property whose transition completed.
A float indicating the number of seconds the transition had been running at the time the event fired. This value isn’t affected by the value of transition-delay .
As usual, you can use the addEventListener() method to monitor for this event:
.addEventListener("transitionend", updateTransition, true);
You detect the beginning of a transition using transitionrun (fires before any delay) and transitionstart (fires after any delay), in the same kind of fashion:
.addEventListener("transitionrun", signalStart, true); el.addEventListener("transitionstart", signalStart, true);
Note: The transitionend event doesn’t fire if the transition is aborted before the transition is completed because either the element is made display : none or the animating property’s value is changed.
Specifications
See also
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This page was last modified on Jul 7, 2023 by MDN contributors.
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