CSS Transitions and Animations Book - Over 100 Examples
Content Index
If there's one thing I've learned working on real projects, it's that a good animation can transform a simple design into something that feels premium. In fact, I always say that CSS animations make the difference between a boring job and something that looks high-level to a client.
And it's not just about aesthetics: animations help communicate, guide the eye, soften changes, and bring the interface to life. When applied well, they create a smooth and natural experience.
What you can achieve with CSS animations today:
- Interfaces that feel smooth and modern.
- Visual effects to capture attention without needing JavaScript.
- Natural transitions between states, hover, clicks, or scroll.
- Microinteractions that improve the user experience.
Why a site without movement feels "boring"
Static pages work, but they don't inspire.
Today's web is no longer just information: it's also an experience.
And well-used animations provide:
- ✔ rhythm
- ✔ intention
- ✔ style
- ✔ professionalism
I also have free resources for the book on the Blog and the community/FREE course and book on the Academy website.
With CSS or in Spanish, Cascading Style Sheets is the style language used to describe the presentation of HTML documents; with CSS it is described how any element defined in HTML should be rendered; this includes the introduction of animations and transitions to make all kinds of eye-catching effects where the only limit is the imagination.
In this book, we will see a series of creative examples using CSS and a little HTML; with this, we will apply animations and/or transitions with CSS; to achieve the desired effect; they are highly customizable exercises and therefore, you can modify and customize them to your liking and use them in real projects.
At first, I admit that everything seemed more difficult than it really is. With so many possibilities—because you can literally animate almost any property—it's normal to feel overwhelmed. But after practicing a few examples, you get the hang of it. It's a natural path: first it confuses you, then you fall in love with it, and this guide will help you get started with animations and transitions and discover their potential.
Purpose
The purpose of this guide is to carry out experiments or exercises with CSS transitions and animations, applied to buttons, images, texts and more complete HTML elements; we will see the most basic approach to CSS animations which would be using transitions, we will see multiple examples and limitations that we have when working with the simplest way to achieve animations in CSS which is the use of transitions. In later chapters we will also work with animations, we will know their characteristics, possible configurations, options and modes and with this, we will see a more complete approach to achieving animation in CSS.
In this book , we will see more than 100 complete and functional examples of animating HTML elements, we will start by applying CSS transitions on buttons, texts among others, to get to the animations in which, we will create experiments from scratch, we will adapt the ones we use with transitions and we will use transitions and animations together.
Prologue
With CSS or in Spanish, Cascading Style Sheets is the style language used to describe the presentation of HTML documents; with CSS it is described how any element defined in HTML should be rendered; this includes the introduction of animations and transitions to make all kinds of eye-catching effects where the only limit is the imagination.
In this book, we will see a series of creative examples using CSS and a little HTML; with this, we will apply animations and/or transitions with CSS; to achieve the desired effect; they are highly customizable exercises and therefore, you can modify and customize them to your liking and use them in real projects.
The focus of the book is mostly practical, presenting more than 100 experiments in which to work and get inspiration for other types of effects in CSS.
The book and book have a total of 5 sections and chapters respectively, it is recommended that you read in the order in which they are arranged and as we explain the components of the framework, go directly to practice, replicate, test and modify the codes that we show in this book.
Who this book is for
The purpose of this guide is to carry out experiments or exercises with CSS transitions and animations, applied to buttons, images, texts and more complete HTML elements; we will see the most basic approach to CSS animations which would be using transitions, we will see multiple examples and limitations that we have when working with the simplest way to achieve animations in CSS which is the use of transitions. In later chapters we will also work with animations, we will know their characteristics, possible configurations, options and modes and with this, we will see a more complete approach to achieving animation in CSS.
In this book, we will see more than 100 complete and functional examples of animating HTML elements, we will start by applying CSS transitions on buttons, texts among others, to get to the animations in which, we will create experiments from scratch, we will adapt the ones we use with transitions and we will use transitions and animations together.
This is a book to experiment with CSS animations, with this we will mention the following:
- It is not a book that aims to know 100% of CSS animations, but rather, in a basic/intermediate way; the objective is to experiment and with this, present different templates that we can use to create all kinds of more complex or simply different animations.
- It is taken for granted that the reader has at least basic knowledge in the use of CSS.
Book content
This book has a total of 5 chapters, it is recommended that you read in the order in which they are arranged and as we explain the components of the framework, go directly to practice, replicate, test and modify the codes that we show in this book.
- In this section we will review geometric transformations, translations and animations in CSS.
- In this section, we will create a multitude of examples of CSS transitions applied to buttons, in these examples we will mainly apply geometric transformations, but we will also work with other CSS properties.
- In this section, we will present different examples of effects in CSS with the hover event; that is, we will continue using CSS transitions as was done in the previous chapter; for these examples, we will use any kind of HTML structure that will not be buttons as in the previous chapter.
- In this section, we will create varied effects using transitions, we will also see their limitations through several examples that we will analyze in the next chapter using animations to achieve more complete animations.
- In this section, we will present the use of animations, based on examples, we will see their possible variants, configurations and examples using animations and transitions equally
Essential bases before animating with CSS
What is animating in CSS and how it works
An animation is a progressive change from one visual state to another using CSS properties.
That includes:
- position
- color
- size
- opacity
- rotation
- shadows
- filters
Animatable properties: what is and what is not
You can animate almost any property:
Yes you can animate:
- transform
- opacity
- color
- background-color
- border-radius
- filter
- clip-path
Better to avoid (for performance):
- width / height
- top / left
- box-shadow (excessive)
Difficult at first, but fluid with practice
I remember that at first I tried to animate everything with transitions, even things that asked for keyframes yes or yes. That confusion is common, especially when the difference between transition and animation is not known. The good news is that everything becomes intuitive quickly.
The book is currently in development…
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Learn to create animations and transitions in CSS to take your web designs to the next level. Discover over 100 practical examples in our course and book to master CSS and create modern, professional interfaces.
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