Pure CSS animated gradient colour button is easier than you think!

#css #gradient #button #beginners

Most buttons are boring. Solid, standard borders. Most of them are not aligned correctly. In today's article, let's learn how to create a gradient colour button with animated borders and text! One single CSS property will handle all the animations.

Outline Button - Easy, Straight, and Boring

Let's start with a basic outline button with hover. It can be created like this:

HTML:

<a href="/" title="Hello button" class="btn">Hello</a>

CSS:

.btn {
  border: 2px solid #4CAF50;
  background-color: transparent;
  color: #4CAF50;
  padding: 10px 28px;
  font-size: 16px;
  cursor: pointer;
  transition: 256ms all;
  border-radius: 20px;
}

.btn:hover {
  background-color: #4CAF50;
  color: #fff;
}

Gradient Button and Text

Going one step further, let's add gradient borders and text. To achieve that, we need to do a few things:

Wrap our button with div and set the background as our body colour.
Add pseudoelements to create borders.
Lastly, we need to add three CSS properties (background-clip: text; -webkit-background-clip: text;).
-webkit-text-fill-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.001)

HTML:

<a href="/" title="Hello button" class="btn">Hello</a>

CSS:

.btn {
  display: block;
  width: 150px;
  background: linear-gradient(90deg, #FFFF00 6%, #FFA500 25%, #F14444 45%, #D53567 55%, #9A109A 94%);
  text-align: center;
  padding: 13px 20px;
  color: #fff;
  background-clip: text;
  -webkit-background-clip: text;
  -webkit-text-fill-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.001);
  transition: 256ms all;
  position: relative;
  cursor: pointer;
}

.btn:before {
  background: rgb(24,24,24);
  content: '';
  position: absolute;
  top: 0px;
  bottom: 0px;
  left: 0px;
  right: 0px;
  z-index: -1;
}

.btn:after {
  content: '';
  position: absolute;
  top: -1px;
  bottom: -1px;
  left: -1px;
  right: -1px;
  background: linear-gradient(90deg, #FFFF00 6%, #FFA500 25%, #F14444 45%, #D53567 55%, #9A109A 94%);
  transition: 256ms all;
  z-index: -1;
}

Awesome! You have created a gradient border button with gradient text! Now we will bring it to life with extra CSS.

Final Boss - Animated Gradient Button

In CSS, we can't transition gradients. It would be awesome to see smooth animation with CSS like this:

.gradient {
  background-image: linear-gradient(red, blue);
  transition: background-image 0.5s linear;
}

.gradient:hover {
  background-image: linear-gradient(green, orange);
}

But it won't work. It immediately changes to the other one without transition. There are a few hacks to do it, but my favourite is to animate background-position.

Firstly, we need to add two properties to our button:

background-size: 200% auto
background-position: left center

Then on hover:

background-position: right center

In this case, I added a gradient starting with white colour. It enhances the impression of an animated border.
HTML:

<a href="/" title="Hello button" class="btn">Hello</a>

CSS:

.btn {
  display: block;
  width: 150px;
  background: linear-gradient(90deg,#ffffff 3%,#ffffff 47%,#FFFF00 53%,#FFA500 72%,#F14444 77%,#D53567 88%,#9A109A 97%);
  background-size: 200% 100%;
  background-position: left center;
  text-align: center;
  padding: 13px 20px;
  color: #fff;
  background-clip: text;
  -webkit-background-clip: text;
  -webkit-text-fill-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.001);
  transition: 256ms all;
  position: relative;
  cursor: pointer;
}

.btn:before {
  content: '';
  position: absolute;
  top: -1px;
  bottom: -1px;
  left: -1px;
  right: -1px;
  background: linear-gradient(90deg,#ffffff 3%,#ffffff 47%,#FFFF00 53%,#FFA500 72%,#F14444 77%,#D53567 88%,#9A109A 97%);
  transition: 256ms all;
  z-index: -1;
  background-size: 200% 100%;
  background-position: left center;
}

.btn:after {
  background: rgb(24,24,24);
  content: '';
  position: absolute;
  top: 0px;
  bottom: 0px;
  left: 0px;
  right: 0px;
  z-index: -1;
}

.btn,
.btn:before {
  background-position: right center;
}