AlbertoM

Posted on Nov 10, 2019 • Updated on Jan 6, 2020 • Originally published at inspiredwebdev.com

HTML/CSS tutorial: create a simple responsive login form

#design #beginners #codenewbie #tutorial

Originally published on inspiredwebdev.com

Responsive HTML Login Form

Difficulty Level: Beginner
Duration: 1 Hour
Github Repository

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a simple HTML Login form like the one below. The design was taken from ColorLib, I simply recreated it from scratch.

We will only use HTML and CSS, no Bootstrap, no JavaScript.

Setup

Before we start writing the markup for our form, let's import a couple of things: - fontawesome - Roboto, our google font Go ahead and paste this code inside the head tag of your index.html file.

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.3.1/css/all.css" integrity="sha384-mzrmE5qonljUremFsqc01SB46JvROS7bZs3IO2EmfFsd15uHvIt+Y8vEf7N7fWAU"
            crossorigin="anonymous">
        <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto:300,400" rel="stylesheet">

Get my ebook on Amazon and Leanpub

The HTML

Now we can move on to writing our markup. We will first write all the HTML and then start styling it with CSS. The structure is fairly simple: - form_wrapper is our main contaner that we will position in the middle of the page - form_left will be the container for the image - form_right will be the container for our input tags - input_container holds a i containing a font-awesome icon and an input tag

    <body>
        <div id="form_wrapper">
            <div id="form_left">
                <img src="icon.png" alt="computer icon">
            </div>
            <div id="form_right">
                <h1>Member Login</h1>
                <div class="input_container">
                    <i class="fas fa-envelope"></i>
                    <input placeholder="Email" type="email" name="Email" id="field_email" class='input_field'>
                </div>
                <div class="input_container">
                    <i class="fas fa-lock"></i>
                    <input  placeholder="Password" type="password" name="Password" id="field_password" class='input_field'>
                </div>
                <input type="submit" value="Login" id='input_submit' class='input_field'>
                <span>Forgot <a href="#"> Username / Password ?</a></span>
                <span id='create_account'>
                    <a href="#">Create your account ➡ </a>
                </span>
            </div>
        </div>
    </body>

The CSS

Now it's the fun part: styling with CSS. To achieve the expected result we will use flexbox and grid layouts alongside with CSS variables to store our colors. Storing values inside CSS variables will make changing colors very easy, have a look at this code:

    :root {
        --body_gradient_left:#7200D0;
        --body_gradient_right: #C800C1;
        --form_bg: #ffffff;
        --input_bg: #E5E5E5;
        --input_hover:#eaeaea;
        --submit_bg: #1FCC44;
        --submit_hover: #40e263;
        --icon_color:#6b6b6b;
    }

Good, now we will apply some default styling to override the browser default:

    * {
        padding: 0;
        margin: 0;
        box-sizing: border-box;
    }

The next step is to start styling the body and the form_wrapper Read the comments to better understand what we are doing here.

    body {
        /* make the body full height*/
        height: 100vh;
        /* set our custom font */
        font-family: 'Roboto',
        sans-serif;
        /* create a linear gradient*/
        background-image: linear-gradient(to right, var(--body_gradient_left), var(--body_gradient_right));
        display:flex;
    }

    #form_wrapper {
        width: 1000px;
        height: 700px;
        /* this will help us center it*/
        margin:auto;
        background-color: var(--form_bg);
        border-radius: 50px;
        /* make it a grid container*/
        display: grid;
        /* with two columns of same width*/
        grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr;
        /* with a small gap in between them*/
        grid-gap: 5vw;
        /* add some padding around */
        padding: 5vh 15px;
    }

On the left side we simply want to display an image centered.

    #form_left {
        /* center the image */
        display: flex;
        justify-content: center;
        align-items: center;
    }

    #form_left img {
        width: 350px;
        height: 350px;
    }

Now let's move to styling the form_right container

    #form_right {
        display: grid;
        /* single column layout */
        grid-template-columns: 1fr;
        /* have some gap in between elements*/
        grid-gap: 20px;
        padding: 10% 5%;
    }

And this is the style for the input tags:

    .input_container {
        background-color: var(--input_bg);
        /* vertically align icon and text inside the div*/
        display: flex;
        align-items: center;
        padding-left: 20px;
    }

    .input_container:hover {
        background-color: var(--input_hover);
    }

    .input_container,
    #input_submit {
        height: 60px;
        /* make the borders more round */
        border-radius: 30px;
        width: 100%;
    }

    .input_field {
        /* customize the input tag with lighter font and some padding*/
        color: var(--icon_color);
        background-color: inherit;
        width: 90%;
        border: none;
        font-size: 1.3rem;
        font-weight: 400;
        padding-left: 30px;
    }

    .input_field:hover,
    .input_field:focus {
        /* remove the outline */
        outline: none;
    }

    #input_submit {
        /* submit button has a different color and different padding */
        background-color: var(--submit_bg);
        padding-left: 0;
        font-weight: bold;
        color: white;
        text-transform: uppercase;
    }

    #input_submit:hover {
        background-color: var(--submit_hover);
        /* simple color transition on hover */
        transition: background-color,
            1s;
        cursor: pointer;
    }

Now let's finish by styling our h1 and our span and a tags

    h1,
    span {
        text-align: center;
    }

    /* shift it a bit lower */
    #create_account {
        display: block;
        position: relative;
        top: 30px;
    }

    a {
        /* remove default underline */
        text-decoration: none;
        color: var(--submit_bg);
        font-weight: bold;
    }

    a:hover {
        color: var(--submit_hover);
    }

    i {
        color: var(--icon_color);
    }

Perfect. You now have a good-looking, simple HTML form. Let's add a few more line of CSS to make sure that it will look nice even on smaller screens:

    /* make it responsive */
    @media screen and (max-width:768px) {

        /* make the layout  a single column and add some margin to the wrapper */
        #form_wrapper {
            grid-template-columns: 1fr;
            margin-left: 10px;
            margin-right: 10px;
        }
        /* on small screen we don't display the image */
        #form_left {
            display: none;
        }
    }

If you like this short tutorial, please leave a comment and share it with your friends. Let me know what else would you like me to cover in a future tutorial.

Get my ebook on Amazon and Leanpub

Top comments (15)

Jonas Linn • Nov 11 '19

Please use semantic html, right now this is very bad for accessibility. Use <form> and <label> to markup your code. #form-right could be the <form> and .input-container could be a <label>. And add a real label, maybe hide it but let it be readable for screenreaders or use a floating label. Relying on the placeholder attribute is not enough.

AlbertoM • Nov 11 '19

Thanks for the feedback! What you said is correct, I'll probably update the code to follow better practices, this was more just a basic tutorial on on how to design one, but you are absolutely correct.

Texx Smith • Nov 21 '19

This code is semantic enough. We can all tell what pieces of code go to what, and that's really all that matters now and all that ever mattered.

SCREW Semantic HTML. Does anyone think someone who can read the code of a webpage is not going to be able to determine the difference between the header and the sidebar when looking at the webpage? Does anyone think that a developer who is editing this code is going to be lost? No. The whole point of semantic html is to make life easier for google. And seriously, if there's no benefit to the website, I'm no longer willing to put an ounce of effort to appease google.

Jonas Linn • Nov 21 '19

Wow. Lost for words. Have you ever considered a blind person using the web?

It is not about the developer, it is about accessibility.

Tutorials like this make accessibility hard. Juniors see this markup and think it's alright, which it is not. A few changes and it would have the accessibility basics covered.

Nick Ryan • Nov 11 '19

Nice and simple however the semantic points have already been made, so please consider updating this to reflect better sematic mark up.

Also, as you are using font-anything-but-awesome then you are using JavaScript therefore claiming that it's only HTML and CSS is not accurate.

It's a good practical example otherwise.

Elena • Jul 26 '21

Very clean code, nice. If anyone is interested in learning html/css in a more visual way should check this youtube tutorial.

MilburnGomes • Nov 11 '19

Great Article! CSS part was very interesting! I'm a back-end developer, so I've referred your code and made changes to login page, still in progress though. Take a look at my work:
github.com/MilburnGomes/SimpleWebs...

We could also keep adding features to make a better website for newbies.
Thanks for sharing!

Jose Luis Ramos T. • Nov 11 '19 • Edited

Saludos me gustaría algo así como / mi primer juego en HTML,CSS y javascript. Nivel principiante 🔰 / mi primer formulario un buen aporte para los que iniciamos en el mundo CSS. Bien 👍