CSS3 Button Tutorials and Techniques Revisited
Once upon a time when a web design required a nice, functional and scalable button it would have had to have been firstly designed in Photoshop, implemented with the sliding doors technique, and you may have had to spice things up with a little Javascript. With CSS3 everything is changing – everything is easier and certainly better.
As well as button tutorials and techniques we have also showcased some CSS3 tools and generators, you will find these at the bottom of the post.
I promise that by next week normal service will resume with even higher quality articles, with even more resourceful posts and, of course, some highly inspirational posts. I can hardly wait !
Hope you have all had a great Christmas!
This article was originally published on February the 15th 2010 and entitled 20 CSS3 Tutorials and Techiques for Creating Buttons.
Pretty CSS3 Buttons
The Objective of this tutorial is to create a set of button styles that are cross browser compliant, can degrade gracefully for non CSS3 compliant browsers and are are entirely scalable, meaning that you can make it a variety of sizes and colors with ease.
This tutorial lends its self heavily from the Super Awesome Buttons tutorial from Zurb, with some insightful and useful alterations and additions.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
CSS3 Button That Degrades Nicely
There was a time where creating a nice looking, scalable button required heavy use of images, the sliding doors technique and even some Javascript.
As it stands a lot of the modern browsers support the CSS we would like to use to create a nice looking button. Firefox, Safari and Opera all have support for rounder corners, box shadows and text shadows.
What used to take six steps and lots of extra mark-up, images and CSS, now only takes three steps and some simple CSS3.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Dynamic Buttons With CSS3
The example in this tutorial demonstrate how to create nice looking, dynamic buttons that are fully scalable using the CSS3 properties border-radius, box-shadow and RGBa.
By using RGBa color values, the button and text shadows will always blend well with any color you choose for your button, no matter if you want the button to be green, red or blue – The code will always remain the same.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
A Sexy Button Using CSS
Roll Your Own Google Buttons
Google has a new focus on webkit-specific properties thanks to their new Chrome browser, which uses a branch of the same rendering engine Safari uses.
The buttons use the -webkit-gradient function, which takes in arguments for the gradient start and stop points as well as color and then creates what the browser basically considers an image. That means you can use gradients anywhere you would use images, including backgrounds and even borders (with border-image).
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Cool Overlapped Menu using Sprites
Here you can learn how to create a cool overlapped pure CSS menu/button using CSS sprites. CSS sprites can be termed as a method for reducing the number of image requests to a web page by combining multiple images into a single image, and display the desired segment using CSS background-image and background-position properties.
The photoshop source is also available for download, so that you can customize it as per your need.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Sexy Buttons
Sexy Buttons is a HTML/CSS-based framework for creating 'sexy' web site buttons. These stylish, attention getting buttons can be used for calls to action wherever user interaction is desired and can be used with either the <button> or <a> elements.
The entire 1000 icons from the Silk Icons set and the 450+ Silk Companion Icons set are included with the Sexy Buttons download.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Radioactive Buttons with CSS Animations and RGBa
Using CSS animations in Safari, you're able to turn an otherwise ordinary button into a glowing, radioactive mess of awesome.
To make it work, you first have to specify all your button styles and then you add the shadows. Now, in the animation, you switch from a box-shadow that matches the background color to the color of the button to give it the glowing effect – And then you add in some animation. Awesome!
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Super Awesome Buttons
This is another tutorial lending itself from the perfectly titled the super awesome buttons, from Zurb. This time the developer has extended them to improve the cross browser compatibility, added a nicer design for when the buttons get clicked and finally removed the necessity to set to different background colors for different states of the buttons.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
CSS3 Buttons from CSSPlay
This demonstration, from Stu Nicholls of CSSPlay, will work in Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome and shows how to style buttons using just the border radius, drop shadows and gradient fills.
No graphics have been used in the demo and no extra markup. If you wanted to be adventurous you could also add a hover state change of gradient fill to give an illumination effect.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Shiny Happy Buttons
In this tutorial you will build buttons that use no images, neither in your HTML nor your CSS. There will be no sliding doors and no image replacement techniques. Just straight up, CSS, CSS3 and a bit of experimental CSS. The finished button will be compatible with pretty much any browser (though with some progressive enhancement for those who keep up with the latest browsers).
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
CSS Sprite-Slide Button
There are lots of tutorials on sliding doors button and lots on the sprite technique, but never a combination of both.This button combines the wonderful sprite technique with the sliding doors technique to make a beautiful button that not only loads in a snap but also looks great and scales to your text.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
CSS3 Box-Shadow Button with Inset Values (Aqua Button)
There’re plenty of tutorials that describe how to create a sexy aqua button with Photoshop, but none that will show you how to create the button using only CSS, more specifically CSS3 (-webkit-gradient, text-shadow and RGBa).
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Simple Button with CSS Image Sprites
The button you’ll be creating in this tutorial takes on traditional styling using subtle gradients and outlines to give the impression of a rounded, three dimensional object. You will learn how to built this simple using CSS image sprites, starting right at the beginning in Photoshop and finishing with the complete coded example.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Beautiful Buttons with CSS Gradients
Using a CSS-based method means you don’t have to regenerate images every time you change text, pages will load much faster and it allows text to be easily localized. In this case it also makes the page better from an accessibility standpoint – the text contained in the <a href> can add context.
In this demo you'll be shown a simple use for the new gradient capabilities and learn how to build a nice-looking embossed and beveled button using gradients and existing CSS properties.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Fancy Buttons Are Here!
Better Button and Nav Interactions
The iPhone user controls are responsive, like tactile objects in your hand. The panels slide and the icons glow when you touch them. It gives the illusion of tighter control over the app. Switching to a touchscreen-less web browser, interactions feel stiff and unsatisfying and lack of response creates a feeling of distance been the user and the interface.
In this well described tutorial the button you will build has a distinct :hover and :active states so that it depresses when clicked. The text also bumps down 1 pixel and the text-shadow changes to give it a 2-dimensional feel. Now that CSS3 is gaining wider support, most of this styling and behavior can be done pretty easily.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Nice 3D Ribbons Only Using CSS3
Yes, it is possible to create a simple and nice (3D) layout with some CSS3 properties, only using code and without the help of any graphic editor.
You will be using box-shadow to create a drop-shadow with RGBa, border-radius and the transform property for the single items of the list to make a nice 3D effect.
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
Super Awesome Buttons with CSS3 and RGBA
Super Awesome Buttons are certainly the Daddy of all the CSS3 buttons above. It was back in April 2009 that ZURB first published this tutorial, and set a high bench-mark for all to follow.
They may look like images, but loading speed and maintainability demonstrate that they are certainly not.
It's a simple button that is made possible by a transparent PNG overlay (for the gradient), border, border-radius, box-shadow, and text-shadow.
Yes, they are so awesome!
Downloads and Docs »Demo »
CSS3 Gradient Generator
The CSS3 Gradient Generator was created as showcase of the power of CSS based gradients as well as a tool for developers and designers to generate a gradient in CSS.
CSS gradients generate an image result, meaning the result of a CSS gradient can be used anywhere an image can be used, be it a background-image, mask,border, or list item bullet.
CSS3 Gradient Generator »
CSS3 Generators and Tools from Westciv
Developers from Westciv offer free to use CSS3 generators, that will not only help with your buttons but with almost every aspect of CSS3.
The tools are:
Linear and Radial Gradients »
Explore CSS gradients (both linear and radial) (an experimental feature in Safari 4, and a proposed addition to CSS3).
Shadows (Text and Box) »
CSS now lets you create drop shadows on text, and on the box of an element. Explore CSS3 transforms (supported in Opera 9, Firefox 3.5 and Safari 1.2 and higher), and box-shadows (supported in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3.1).
CSS Transforms »
You can rotate, scale, skew, and otherwise transform HTML elements with CSS 3. Explore CSS3 CSS Transforms (supported in Opera 10.5, Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 and higher).
CSS Text Stroke »
You can stroke text with experimental CSS text-stroke, supported in Safari 4.
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