Code an Awesome Animated Download Button With CSS3

Follow along as we create a simple and fun download button using some fancy CSS3. Our button will use lots of fun goodies including border-radius, box-shadow, linear-gradients, z-index and transitions to achieve a unique double sliding drawer effect on hover.

As we go, I’ll discuss why some techniques that you might think to use should be avoided. Transitions are tricky to work with and are quite prone to refuse to work with certain properties. Read on to find out more.

The Concept Loosely based on this idea, I wanted to create a download button with a cool sliding drawer effect where originally hidden information pops out when the user begins a hover event. To put my own spin on it, I decided to double the effect and create a drawer on both the top and bottom of the button (click here for a sneak peek of the finished result).

Here’s how it will work: using a combination of HTML and CSS, we’ll create three separate pieces. These include the main button and two smaller info panels. The smaller panels will initially hide under the larger button, then when the user hovers, one will slide upward and the other downward.

As you can see, this will be a pretty easy project that is perfect for beginners that are looking to up their CSS skills. Especially worth learning is how we’ll utilize absolute positioning and stacking via z-index.

What Won’t Work
As I planned out this project, I came up with a couple of ways to make my concept work. Given that I’ve been on a pseudo element kick lately, the way that I chose to structure the project initially was through the use of :before and :after.

With these pseudo elements, we can code only the download button in our HTML and then add in the wings using pure CSS. It seems like an optimal solution and indeed it worked great… until I tried to animate the transition. No matter what I tried, I simply couldn’t get the transition to work.

After a little research I discovered that that only Firefox supports CSS transitions on pseudo elements. This is a real bummer that really limits the fun we can have with :before and :after, but on the upside I learned a valuable lesson that will save me a lot of time and trouble in the future.

In tutorials like this one you don’t often get to hear about where the author failed, but I think it’s important to communicate these failures so you can learn from them as I have. Now the next time you want to animate a pseudo element you’ll remember that it won’t work in most browsers!

Failures aside, let’s jump into a method that will work.

The Button
To begin, we’ll create and style our button. Once we have this in place, it’ll be easier to form the other elements. All we need in the HTML department is a single div containing a link. We could simply use the link for the button but we’ll need to group multiple objects together so a div is necessary.

---

<div class="button">
<a href="#">Download</a>
</div>

---

Style

---

.button a {
display: block;
height: 50px;
width: 200px;
background: #00b7ea;
}

.button a {
display: block;
height: 50px;
width: 200px;
background: #00b7ea;

/*TYPE*/
color: white;
font: 17px/50px Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif;
text-decoration: none;
text-align: center;
text-transform: uppercase;
}

background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 0%, #009ec3 100%); /* FF3.6+ */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#00b7ea), color-stop(100%,#009ec3)); /* Chrome,Safari4+ */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 0%,#009ec3 100%); /* Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 0%,#009ec3 100%); /* Opera 11.10+ */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 0%,#009ec3 100%); /* IE10+ */
background: linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 0%,#009ec3 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#00b7ea', endColorstr='#009ec3',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */


Adding The Drawers

---

<div class="button">
<a href="#">Download</a>
<p class="top">click to begin</p>
<p class="bottom">1.2MB .zip</p>
</div>

---

Default Paragraph Styling

---

p {
background: #222;
display: block;
height: 40px;
width: 180px;
margin: -50px 0 0 10px;

/*TYPE*/
text-align: center;
font: 12px/45px Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif;
color: #fff;

/*POSITION*/
position: absolute;
z-index: -1;

/*CSS3*/
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;

-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
-moz-box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
}
.button a, p {
-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
border-radius: 10px;

-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
-moz-box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
}

---

Hover and Active Styles

---

.button:hover .top {
margin: -80px 0 0 10px;
line-height: 35px;
}

.button:hover .bottom {
margin: -10px 0 0 10px;
}
/*Adjust Gradient*/
.button a:active {
background: #00b7ea; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 36%, #009ec3 100%); /* FF3.6+ */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(36%,#00b7ea), color-stop(100%,#009ec3)); /* Chrome,Safari4+ */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 36%,#009ec3 100%); /* Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 36%,#009ec3 100%); /* Opera 11.10+ */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 36%,#009ec3 100%); /* IE10+ */
background: linear-gradient(top, #00b7ea 36%,#009ec3 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#00b7ea', endColorstr='#009ec3',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */

}

/*Pulls in Wings*/
.button:active .bottom {
margin: -20px 0 0 10px;
}

.button:active .top {
margin: -70px 0 0 10px;
}

Final Step: Add The Transition

---

p {
background: #222;
display: block;
height: 40px;
width: 180px;
margin: -50px 0 0 10px;

/*TYPE*/
text-align: center;
font: 12px/45px Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif;
color: #fff;

/*POSITION*/
position: absolute;
z-index: -1;

/*CSS3*/
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;

-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
-moz-box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
box-shadow: 2px 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);

-webkit-transition: all 0.5s ease;
-moz-transition: all 0.5s ease;
-o-transition: all 0.5s ease;
-ms-transition: all 0.5s ease;
transition: all 0.5s ease;
}