CSS Animations Animations with keyframes

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Example

For multi-stage CSS animations, you can create CSS @keyframes. Keyframes allow you to define multiple animation points, called a keyframe, to define more complex animations.


Basic Example

In this example, we'll make a basic background animation that cycles between all colors.

@keyframes rainbow-background {
         0%     { background-color: #ff0000; }
     8.333%     { background-color: #ff8000; }
    16.667%     { background-color: #ffff00; }
    25.000%     { background-color: #80ff00; }
    33.333%     { background-color: #00ff00; }
    41.667%     { background-color: #00ff80; }
    50.000%     { background-color: #00ffff; }
    58.333%     { background-color: #0080ff; }
    66.667%     { background-color: #0000ff; }
    75.000%     { background-color: #8000ff; }
    83.333%     { background-color: #ff00ff; }
    91.667%     { background-color: #ff0080; }
    100.00%     { background-color: #ff0000; }
}

.RainbowBackground {
    animation: rainbow-background 5s infinite;
}

View Result

There's a few different things to note here. First, the actual @keyframes syntax.

@keyframes rainbow-background{

This sets the name of the animation to rainbow-background.

0%     { background-color: #ff0000; }

This is the definition for a keyframe within the animation. The first part, the 0% in the case, defines where the keyframe is during the animation. The 0% implies it is 0% of the total animation time from the beginning.

The animation will automatically transition between keyframes. So, by setting the next background color at 8.333%, the animation will smoothly take 8.333% of the time to transition between those keyframes.

.RainbowBackground {
    animation: rainbow-background 5s infinite;
}

This code attaches our animation to all elements which have the .RainbowBackground class.

The actual animation property takes the following arguments.

  • animation-name: The name of our animation. In this case, rainbow-background
  • animation-duration: How long the animation will take, in this case 5 seconds.
  • animation-iteration-count (Optional): The number of times the animation will loop. In this case, the animation will go on indefinitely. By default, the animation will play once.
  • animation-delay (Optional): Specifies how long to wait before the animation starts. It defaults to 0 seconds, and can take negative values. For example, -2s would start the animation 2 seconds into its loop.
  • animation-timing-function (Optional): Specifies the speed curve of the animation. It defaults to ease, where the animation starts slow, gets faster and ends slow.

In this particular example, both the 0% and 100% keyframes specify { background-color: #ff0000; }. Wherever two or more keyframes share a state, one may specify them in a single statement. In this case, the two 0% and 100% lines could be replaced with this single line:

0%, 100%     { background-color: #ff0000; }

Cross-browser compatibility

For older WebKit-based browsers, you'll need to use the vendor prefix on both the @keyframes declaration and the animation property, like so:

@-webkit-keyframes{}

-webkit-animation: ...


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