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Search Engine Friendly Development: Crawlable Link Structures
InsightsPart 2 of our 8-part series on developing search engine friendly website structures. This was originally written by Rand Fishkin and Moz Staff, and posted on posted Moz. Image courtesy Design Beep.
Just as search engines need to see content in order to list pages in their massive keyword-based indexes, they also need to see links in order to find the content in the first place. A crawlable link structure—one that lets the crawlers browse the pathways of a website—is vital to them finding all of the pages on a website. Hundreds of thousands of sites make the critical mistake of structuring their navigation in ways that search engines cannot access, hindering their ability to get pages listed in the search engines’ indexes.
Below, we’ve illustrated how this problem can happen:
In the example above, Google’s crawler has reached page A and sees links to pages B and E. However, even though C and D might be important pages on the site, the crawler has no way to reach them (or even know they exist). This is because no direct, crawlable links point pages C and D. As far as Google can see, they don’t exist! Great content, good keyword targeting, and smart marketing won’t make any difference if the crawlers can’t reach your pages in the first place.
Link tags can contain images, text, or other objects, all of which provide a clickable area on the page that users can engage to move to another page. These links are the original navigational elements of the Internet – known as hyperlinks. In the above illustration, the “<a” tag indicates the start of a link. The link referral location tells the browser (and the search engines) where the link points. In this example, the URL https://www.jonwye.com/ is referenced. Next, the visible portion of the link for visitors, called anchor text in the SEO world, describes the page the link points to. The linked-to page is about custom belts made by Jon Wye, thus the anchor text “Jon Wye’s Custom Designed Belts.” The “</a>” tag closes the link to constrain the linked text between the tags and prevent the link from encompassing other elements on the page.This is the most basic format of a link, and it is eminently understandable to the search engines. The crawlers know that they should add this link to the engines‘ link graph of the web, use it to calculate query-independent variables (like Google’s PageRank), and follow it to index the contents of the referenced page.
Submission-required forms
If you require users to complete an online form before accessing certain content, chances are search engines will never see those protected pages. Forms can include a password-protected login or a full-blown survey. In either case, search crawlers generally will not attempt to submit forms, so any content or links that would be accessible via a form are invisible to the engines.
Links in unparseable JavaScript
If you use JavaScript for links, you may find that search engines either do not crawl or give very little weight to the links embedded within. Standard HTML links should replace JavaScript (or accompany it) on any page you’d like crawlers to crawl.
Links pointing to pages blocked by the Meta Robots tag or robots.txt
The Meta Robots tag and the robots.txt file both allow a site owner to restrict crawler access to a page. Just be warned that many a webmaster has unintentionally used these directives as an attempt to block access by rogue bots, only to discover that search engines cease their crawl.
Frames or iframes
Technically, links in both frames and iframes are crawlable, but both present structural issues for the engines in terms of organization and following. Unless you’re an advanced user with a good technical understanding of how search engines index and follow links in frames, it’s best to stay away from them.
Robots don’t use search forms
Although this relates directly to the above warning on forms, it’s such a common problem that it bears mentioning. Some webmasters believe if they place a search box on their site, then engines will be able to find everything that visitors search for. Unfortunately, crawlers don’t perform searches to find content, leaving millions of pages inaccessible and doomed to anonymity until a crawled page links to them.
Links in Flash, Java, and other plug-ins
The links embedded inside the Juggling Panda site (from our above example) are perfect illustrations of this phenomenon. Although dozens of pandas are listed and linked to on the page, no crawler can reach them through the site’s link structure, rendering them invisible to the engines and hidden from users’ search queries.
Links on pages with many hundreds or thousands of links
Search engines will only crawl so many links on a given page. This restriction is necessary to cut down on spam and conserve rankings. Pages with hundreds of links on them are at risk of not getting all of those links crawled and indexed.
Rel=”nofollow” can be used with the following syntax:
<a href="http://moz.com" rel="nofollow">Lousy Punks!</a>
Links can have lots of attributes. The engines ignore nearly all of them, with the important exception of the rel=”nofollow” attribute. In the example above, adding the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link tag tells the search engines that the site owners do not want this link to be interpreted as an endorsement of the target page.Nofollow, taken literally, instructs search engines to not follow a link (although some do). The nofollow tag came about as a method to help stop automated blog comment, guest book, and link injection spam (read more about the launch here), but has morphed over time into a way of telling the engines to discount any link value that would ordinarily be passed. Links tagged with nofollow are interpreted slightly differently by each of the engines, but it is clear they do not pass as much weight as normal links.Are nofollow links bad?
Although they don’t pass as much value as their followed cousins, nofollowed links are a natural part of a diverse link profile. A website with lots of inbound links will accumulate many nofollowed links, and this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, Moz’s Ranking Factors showed that high ranking sites tended to have a higher percentage of inbound nofollow links than lower-ranking sites.
Previous: Indexable Content
Next: Keyword Usage and Targeting
Search Engine Friendly Development: Indexable Content
InsightsPart 1 of our 8-part series on developing search engine friendly website structures. This was originally written by Rand Fishkin and Moz Staff, and posted on posted Moz. Image courtesy PixBay.
Search engines are limited in how they crawl the web and interpret content. A webpage doesn’t always look the same to you and me as it looks to a search engine. In this section, we’ll focus on specific technical aspects of building (or modifying) web pages so they are structured for both search engines and human visitors alike. Share this part of the guide with your programmers, information architects, and designers, so that all parties involved in a site’s construction are on the same page.
Indexable Content
To perform better in search engine listings, your most important content should be in HTML text format. Images, Flash files, Java applets, and other non-text content are often ignored or devalued by search engine crawlers, despite advances in crawling technology. The easiest way to ensure that the words and phrases you display to your visitors are visible to search engines is to place them in the HTML text on the page. However, more advanced methods are available for those who demand greater formatting or visual display styles:
Seeing your site as the search engines do
Many websites have significant problems with indexable content, so double-checking is worthwhile. By using tools like Google’s cache, SEO-browser.com, and the MozBar you can see what elements of your content are visible and indexable to the engines. Take a look atGoogle’s text cache of this page you are reading now. See how different it looks?
“I have a problem with getting found. I built a huge Flash site for juggling pandas and I’m not showing up anywhere on Google. What’s up?”
Whoa! That’s what we look like?
Using the Google cache feature, we can see that to a search engine, JugglingPandas.com’s homepage doesn’t contain all the rich information that we see. This makes it difficult for search engines to interpret relevancy.
Hey, where did the fun go?
Uh oh … via Google cache, we can see that the page is a barren wasteland. There’s not even text telling us that the page contains the Axe Battling Monkeys. The site is built entirely in Flash, but sadly, this means that search engines cannot index any of the text content, or even the links to the individual games. Without any HTML text, this page would have a very hard time ranking in search results.
It’s wise to not only check for text content but to also use SEO tools to double-check that the pages you’re building are visible to the engines. This applies to your images, and as we next, to your links as well.
Next: Crawlable Link Structures
The Top 5 Reasons to Keep Your WordPress Up-to-date
InsightsOriginally posted by Mark Avila, 3 Media Web
WordPress is the most popular content management platform world-wide.
And when you keep WordPress updated, it’s also among the most secure. But if you neglect the updates, your WordPress website is at risk from attacks, vulnerabilities and inconveniences.
Here are 5 reasons why updating WordPress will make your life easier.
1: Gives You More Feature Options
Like a fine wine, WordPress gets better with age. Why? Because new features and enhancements are constantly being added to make WordPress more robust, versatile and feature-rich.
So why settle for a clunky old version when you don’t have to?
2: Makes WordPress Easier and Faster
When it comes to technology, there are two things we can all agree on…
We want it fast and easy to use. That’s what you get when you update WordPress… the fastest, highest-performance user experience available.
3: Prepares You for Change
To remain fresh and relevant, your website will eventually need updates or changes. Maybe you’re adding pages and changing the navigation. Perhaps a new add-on can make your website more helpful and valuable to your visitors. Or your website is due for a redesign.
Often these changes require the latest version of WordPress. With WordPress up-to-date your website will run smoothly, without a hitch.
4: Treats Your Visitors Well
Whether your WordPress website generates income or simply fuels readers’ appetite for content, you must treat your visitors well. But if you’re running an out-dated version of WordPress under your hood, your website could get “glitchy”.
Your visitors could encounter unexplained frustrations with your website. And you may never know about these problems until diminishing traffic sends up a red flag.
WordPress updates are continually solving user issues. And by keeping current, you can preempt many technical issues before they rear their ugly heads to your visitors.
And of course …
5: Keeps Threats at Bay
Simply put, your outdated WordPress website is a sitting duck to hackers. Especially because they use free software to automatically “scour” the internet – like evil minions that reveal which websites are vulnerable to their vile deeds.
WordPress is vigilant about keeping its software secure and its millions of users protected. But you can’t shield your website from attacks unless you install and apply the WordPress updates to your WP website. When you do, you’re fixing the problem before it starts.
You wouldn’t consider driving your car for years on end without an oil change. So why risk letting your precious WordPress website go without the latest updates?
Just as most don’t change their own oil, many WordPress website owners prefer to let someone else keep their website updated. That’s why we’ve recently introduced our WordPress Update Package, where we take care of it all for you safely and securely, without any interruptions to your site. For more information on this hassle-free service, click here.
5 Myths of Password Security
InsightsOriginally posted by Brent Jensen
High profile database breaches aren’t a daily thing just yet, but they’re certainly not rare. Linode’s recent system-wide password reset and Scribd’s account compromises were announced just nine days apart. In the last week, there have been breaches at LivingSocial and Reputation.com. Pay attention to the e-mails sent after hacks like these, and you’ll notice they often come with a set of new password recommendations. Password best practices are something Stormpath has already covered in depth, but always from a backend perspective.
So, instead of cautioning against hashing with MD5 again (seriously though, don’t do it), we wanted to take a look at some of the more insidious password myths we run into. We hope this helps developers create smart password policies, which we will shamelessly mention you can set automatically if you use Stormpath.
1. MYTH: Complexity Trumps Length
The truth here is that password security depends heavily on the attack method. Dictionary attacks can crack different passwords than brute-force attacks. People often think of a short set of random characters like “*K>#)0$j4” as super secure, but a long string of memorable words like “golfkangaroocrispyhalitosis” is actually stronger.
The reason has everything to do with password entropy: a representation of how much uncertainty there is in a password. This translates to how computationally difficult a password is to crack. Simply put, adding length increases entropy more efficiently than replacing letters with symbols.
It is also important for users to use random text in passwords, like ‘golf kangaroo crispy halitosis’, which is comprised of words with no obvious correlation. Using people’s names, repeating characters, sequential numbers or well-known keyboard entries like `qwerty` are expected – the opposite of random.
We recommend the intrigued reader check out this great blog post for a deeper explanation on password entropy, or XKCD’s notorious (and amazing) comic for quicker reference. When enforcing passwords or giving guidance to your users, prioritize length and random text over character complexity. Better yet, aim for both.
2. MYTH: Big Companies Store Passwords Securely
50% of web apps store credentials unencrypted. As in plain text. As in someone who gains access to the app’s database can simply read the passwords. LinkedIn is about as legitimate as companies come, but they weren’t following basic best practices (namely, not using a salt) before their breach last year. Users should use a unique password everywhere, and on account creation screens, you can remind them to do so. Not only does it help the user, it also means someone else’s weak hash won’t have an effect on your system.
3. MYTH: Password Checkers Ensure Strong Passwords
Stormpath uses password strength enforcement on our own registration form, and it’s available to use through our API. It’s absolutely a useful mechanism, but not all password checkers are created equal.
Password strength checkers use custom “security criteria” to assess a password, and a minimum score may be required to finish registration. There are two common methods for calculating these scores: measuring the entropy of the password (often represented as ‘time to crack’) or comparing it against a set of benchmarks. In addition to length, common benchmarks include whether a password contains numbers, mixed case letters, or special characters.
Microsoft’s secure password checker and The Password Meter are two popular third party options. Both are useful tools, but they’re not substitutes for best practices. Less-than-stellar passwords can score high:
For instance, a string of the letter ‘j’ should not receive top marks, even with its high entropy value. An attacker can too easily repeat one character the maximum number of times a login form allows. Does combining ‘Jessica’ and ‘1234567’ make for a Very Strong password? They were among the most common passwords in the massive RockYou breach. The same goes for ‘Qwertyabc123’, which both tools mark as Strong. Blacklisting common passwords is difficult to bake into a password checker (our own form would block the first password above and allow the second two), but they’re easy for an informed user to consider.
Keep in mind that we’ve been assuming a solid implementation of the checker. Unfortunately, scoring criteria are often weak (i.e. 6 character minimum), based on outdated assumptions, or simply nonexistent. Overall, these enforcement algorithms provide improved security to the majority of users. However, their inevitable weaknesses mean they should be viewed as an added bonus and never as a reason to settle for weak encryption.
4. MYTH: Two-Factor Auth Means Any Password Will Do
Two–factor authentication is like every other system in at least one regard: flaws will be found. Last year, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince wrote up a detailed account of the hack that gained access to his Email account. The kicker? He had already implemented two-factor authentication—the attacker got around it.
This is absolutely not a dismissal of multi-factor auth. Use it when it’s available! Two factor is on the Stormpath roadmap, and we use it for many backend systems. Just don’t consider it a substitute for strong passwords.
5. MYTH: CAPTCHA Keeps Accounts Safe
Two major weaknesses make CAPTCHA a poor choice for preventing brute-force login attempts. First, it’s difficult for users. Second, most implementations aren’t sufficiently secure. CAPTCHA has the unenviable task of finding that sweet spot where it can fool ever-improvingattacks without introducing significant friction to the login process.
Stanford University conducted an interesting study examining just how effective CAPTCHA is at minimizing that friction. A few takeaways:
That’s a lot of annoyance from a user standpoint, and if usability for usability’s sake isn’t enough, CAPTCHA really does cause users to bounce. The percentage of users who give up in frustration varies, but figures of 20% have been reported. It should be noted that some of these are likely the bots CAPTCHA is intended to thwart.
To cap it all off, most CAPTCHA schemes are quite breakable. There’s a vibrant economyaround doing just that. More secure implementations are forced to engage in constant escalation to stay that way—resulting in more difficult CAPTCHAs. At the end of the day, we don’t recommend CAPTCHA for protecting against account hijacking.
Bonus Myth: Passwords are dead! Long live (insert favorite authentication method here)! See:http://www.stormpath.com/blog/long-live-password
11 Tips for Fashion eCommerce Success
InsightsOriginally posted by Pedram Yasharel (Product Marketing, Magento)
Success in the world of fashion eCommerce can be elusive. Competition is fierce and the bottom line is often defined by the appearance, usability, and mobility of your website. According toStatista, 25 percent of users abandon shopping carts due to complicated navigation, 21 percent because the ordering process takes too long, and 15 percent because the website times out.
Shopping cart abandonment is steadily increasing every year, and the monetary losses are staggering. In fact, Business Insider reports that about $4 trillion worth of merchandise will be abandoned in online carts in 2015.
The growing influence of mobile is an opportunity no retailer can afford to ignore. eMarketer predicts that 25 percent of eCommerce sales will be conducted from mobile devices by 2017. This “move” will translate into billions of dollars, and will also continue to increase.
But these are only a few parts of the equation. Grabbing more market share than your competitors requires a comprehensive marketing strategy. Here are 11 tips to help you stand out from the crowd and turn your website into a money-making machine.
1. Give Your Regular Customers Love.
According to the Harvard Business Review, it can cost anywhere fromfive to twenty-five percent more to acquire new customers than to keep existing ones. Your customer retention strategy should include loyalty programs such as discounts for frequent customers. They will be far less likely to browse your competitors’ sites when they know they can buy from your fashion eCommerce store to get the quality products they’re used to at a more favorable price.
2. Offer Customer Support.
Nothing frustrates a customer more than poor customer service. If you make returning items difficult, customers are likely to buy from a competitor the next time around. According to the Wall Street Journal, about a third of all Internet transactions are returned. If possible, have customer service agents available around-the-clock to field and resolve customer inquiries. Great customer support can significantly shorten the sales cycle and keep your customers coming back for more.
3. Give Customers a Reason to Come Back.
Speaking of keeping customers coming back, create and execute anemail marketing campaign that delivers a new promotion into their inbox each week. Your fashion eCommerce store stays top-of-mind and, if different promotions are segmented to the right customer lists, you can count on more sales—not to mention a high ROI.
4. Use Amazing Images.
It’s no secret that successful fashion eCommerce requires excellent photography. Most stock images simply don’t cut it anymore. Hire a professional fashion photographer to take high quality photos of your inventory that go beyond the simple product shot to tell your brand story. Your store will outshine your competitors and the ROI will be well worth it.
5. Tell Stories.
Rather than just writing plain product descriptions, create vibrant stories that help your customers better imagine owning your product. For example, change “a gorgeous evening gown perfect for any party,” to “Picture yourself as the ‘it’ girl at your next extravagant party by wearing this elegant black and white dress that will make you the bell of the ball.”
6. Be Easy to Find.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is another critical component of your fashion eCommerce strategy. After all, if it’s difficult to find your website in the first place, how do you really expect to make sales? Work with an SEO consultant to make sure the copy on the page is optimized for every product, in addition to the meta tags that give search engines the information they need to properly index your product pages.
7. Partner With the Right Businesses.
Smart partnerships are always important when it comes to developing a successful fashion website. Build relationships with key influencers and bloggers who can be invaluable brand ambassadors for your eCommerce site. Start by reaching out to well-known reviewers who will lend a quote to the quality of your product, and develop relationships with industry websites who may allow you to post guest blogs and/or be one of their featured fashion sites.
8. Keep It Clean.
It may go without saying, but keeping your fashion eCommerce website clean is critical if you want visitors to continue browsing (and hopefully click the “buy now” button). Your user interface has to be impeccable, as does making the overall user experience as simple and interactive as possible. With so many other options, a buyer who’s ready to pull the trigger may leave for a competitor’s site because viewing product specs is difficult and reviewing checkout information is confusing.
9. Be Mobile.
If you’re seeing 25-30% of your customers coming from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, consider embracing responsive designfor your website. They’re far more likely to browse your site on their tablet or smartphone on-the-go, so your fashion eCommerce site needs to be easy to read and interact with on any device.
10. Embody a Lifestyle.
The importance of differentiation in the fashion game can’t be overstated. With so much competition online, your best bet is to focus on a niche and spend your money on demonstrating your expertise in that niche. For instance, in the example above, focusing on extravagant evening gowns can be more lucrative than simply selling a wide variety of inexpensive dresses.
11. Get Pricing Right.
After everything you’ve done to get potential customers to purchase a product, the last thing you want to do is lose them because a competitor has a slightly lower price. Perform meticulous research on pricing, and always offer a bonus coupon or future promotion opportunity to give them the confidence to keep typing in that credit card number.
And last but not least, don’t hesitate to consult with a fashion eCommerce expert. Talk to a specialist today about building your fashion site and growing your business faster, or visit our Fashion page for a preview.
Late addition
Custom Logo Cases has created this sensational knowledge-base article:
How to Optimize Your Checkout Cart By Understanding Natural Human Behavior
22 stunning examples of CSS3 animation
InsightsOriginally posted by Creative Bloq
You no longer need Flash to create web-based animations and interactivity. Here are some of the best experiments in CSS3 animation to inspire you.
The latest CSS3 properties have opened a multitude of new doors to web designers and developers. It’s now possible to create animations and interactivity entirely in CSS markup, without going near Flash, Silverlight or After Effects.
The inspirational experiments in CSS3 animation listed here show just what CSS is now capable of – and while some utilise the odd bit of JavaScript, no plug-ins are necessary. Be warned, though: because they were specifically created as experiments, most of these animations will only work in the very latest versions of web browsers (and some will also only work in specific browsers).
To see all our CSS3 posts, click here
01. Solar system
You don’t have to be a web design expert to appreciate this animated model of the solar system, another one of the bestexamples of CSS we’ve found. Created by Julian Garnier, it shows the eight planets orbiting the sun in 3D (yes, you read that right – despite what you got told at school, boffins recently decided that Pluto is no longer officially a planet).
The demo was inspired by similar projects by Alex Giron andNicolas Gallager. It’s one of a number of HTML, CSS and JavaScript projects to have been uploaded to CodePen, a new app created by CSS-Tricks creator Chris Coyier, Alex Vazquezand Tim Sabat to help designers and developers share and fork their work.
02. 3D page flip
Created by web designer and developer Fabrizio Bianchi, this fantastic 3D bending page flip effect is a CSS-only experiment. Be aware that it’ll only work on browsers that support transform-style: preserve-3D.
03. Periodic table
The periodic table of elements is a popular subject for designers to showcase new web technologies, and this latest CSS3 experiment is the most fun yet. Built by Barcelona-based web designer Ricardo Cabello – best known within the community as ‘Mr Doob‘ – the demo starts with the animated elements hurtling through space towards each other to form a table.
You’re then given the option to rotate them in three dimensions by dragging on your mouse. You can also switch between ‘Table’, ‘Sphere’, ‘Helix’, and ‘Grid’ views by clicking the buttons at the bottom of the page.
Cabello created the experiment to see if he could use his three.jsJavaScript library to replicate the effects used in a demo for the game engine famo.us. You can find full details on his Google+ page. In case you don’t have access to a modern browser, Cabello has also posted this video of how the demo runs on an iPad 2:
04. CSS Creatures
We all know that working in the design industry can sometimes become monotonous. So, take some time out from your busy schedule and have some creative fun with this cute little CSS project from Pittsburgh-based web designer and developerBennett Feely.
CSS Creatures allows the user to design, create and animate their very own web-based friend. Like the sound of that? All you have to do is send a tweet to @CSSCreatures with your preferred colour, personality and features. Your CSS creature then appears on the site in under 25 seconds!
05. Bonfire Night safety infographic
With Bonfire Night approaching in the UK, Col Morley and Igor Krestov of Blue Claw decided to put their CSS skills to work creating this fire safety infographic aimed at school-age children.
When viewed in a suitable browser, some elements of the infographic will animate. Rather than aiming at supersmooth, in-your-face visual effects, the flickering of the flames and the sparkling of the sparklers is simple, subtle – and, we think, all the more effective for it.
Inspired by Firefox’s homepage Olympic flame over the summer of 2012, the infographic was created using layered graphics and CSS3 to aid in the process of transition of scale, movement and speed, explains Morley. “The bonfire is made up of several layered ‘fire’ shapes then playing around with key frames enabled stretching, opacity and by adding a warm glow renders a realistic flame effect.
“The spark that appears throughout the page was created using a similar technique. Three images were used to pulsate at different rates of scale, similar effect to how we animated the ‘fearful cat’. The movement of the eyes on the hot dog was produced by mouse tracking code adding further interest to those who spotted that.
“The styling of the traditional blackboard theme gives the piece the right level and tone for the audience and enabled us to experiment with textures and fonts.”
06. AT-AT Walker from Star Wars
This illustrated animation of AT-AT Walker from The Empire Strikes Back by Anthony Calzadilla is created entirely in CSS3. Click on the ‘view the bones’ link on the iPad and you can see how each part animates and functions. This great piece of work suggests we’re going to see a lot more of CSS3 introduced with online gaming.
07. Chessboard Vacuum
You know those optical illusions you get that appear to be moving, even though they’re static images? This isn’t one of those. It’s a mesmeric piece of CSS by Ana Tudor, in which a sort of chessboard slowly spins and mutates and rebuilds and spins and mutates and oh God we can’t stop looking at it.
08. Futurama Animation
This entertaining CSS3 rollover created by Stu Nicholls enables you to horizontal-run your cursor along the image and watch Zoidberg from the sci-fi cartoon Futurama dance on the table. You can also repeatedly click on the image above and watch each animated state.
09. Responsive cat
Japanese web designer and interactive director Masayuki Kido, aka Roxik, has created this animated kitty which stretches across the length of the browser window, and resizes accordingly as you reduce the window’s width. Make it narrow enough and the word changes with hilarious consequences. And the fun doesn’t end there – but we don’t want to spoilt it, so go have a play now!
10. Animated Buttons
This series of demos, featuring icons by webiconset.com and a symbol font by Just Be Nice, showcase seven beautifully animated link elements with different styles, hover effects and active states. The animation is marvellous, although we’re not to sure from a user perspective about the way the information is hidden until you hover over the link .
11. Original Hover Effects
In another great demo series, Alessio Atzeni has created some brilliant CSS transitions. Hover over the thumbnail and the CSS animation reveals further information in a way that makes you go wow. There is a great selection of transitions with 10 different demos to choose from. If you want to integrate this rollover effect on your own site then follow this tutorial.
12. Mad-Manimation
This animated title sequence for the hit TV drama Mad Men showcases what CSS3 animation has to offer in the form of ultra-smooth video. It was made by Anthony Calzadilla, Geri Coady and Andy Clarke, and if you work in web design, you’ll notice a few familiar names and faces. To find out how it was created, see this blog post.
NOTE: This CSS3 animation only works in WebKit-based browsers, which include Safari and Chrome. Alternatively, you can watch it on the YouTube video above.
13. Safari Technology Demos
This demo lets you gaze around the Apple Store in 360 degrees – an amazing virtual scene in your web browser which you can navigate without the need for any additional plug-in software. CSS transforms are used to position six images in 3D space to form a cube with the user’s viewpoint inside. As you navigate, the cube is rotated to reflect the new appropriate position.NOTE: Best viewed in Safari.
14. The Man from Hollywood
This kinetic type experiment made by Tyler Gaw uses advanced CSS3 selectors and CSS3 transitions, as well as a little JavaScript where necessary. NOTE: This demo only works on the following browsers: Chrome, Safari, and “kinda-sorta on Firefox 4+”.
15. Animated Google Doodle
Inspired by Google’s JavaScript-powered Doodle markingEadweard J Muybridge‘s 182nd birthday, the guys at CSS Creations set out to achieve a pure CSS alternative using transitions against a background-image sprite. As a result, the CSS3 animation behaves almost exactly as the JavaScript original.
16. Interactive album covers
Not only have @MrDenav and @lucasmarinm ofbluedashed.com recreated some classic record covers using pure CSS, they’ve also made them react to music. Demonstrations include First Impressions by the Strokes and Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. NOTE: Only works in Google Chrome.
17. Scrolling Coke Can
Roman Cortes‘ Pure CSS coke can has been painstakingly assembled using fiendishly clever background-positioning, giving the convincing illusion that the can is rotating when a visitor scrolls left or right. (You may have noticed that this is actually CSS 2.1 rather than CSS3, but we loved it so much we couldn’t resisting including it in this list!).
18. Animated 3D Super Mario Icon
Doesn’t this just take you back? Andreas Jacob‘s retro Super Mario
leaps off the page using 3D transform and rotation to ruthless effect. A CSS3 animation to make you feel young again! NOTE:Supported browsers are Safari 5 & Chrome 14.
19. Animated Fail Whale
Steve Dennis took Yiying Lu’s famous Twitter fail whale to an all-new level when he recreated an animated version using pure CSS methods. This CSS3 animation also stands up surprisingly well in Internet Explorer 6! How about that?
20. 3D Clouds
This experiment to create fluffy clouds using CSS3 3D Transforms and a bit of JavaScript is simply amazing. You move the mouse to rotate around and mouse wheel to zoom in and out, and hit space to generate a new cloud. It was made byJaume Sánchez and inspired by Mr.Doob’s WebGL clouds and Mark J. Harris’ Real-Time Cloud Rendering for Games. For those wanting to try this CSS3 animation technique for themselves, there is also a tutorial worth checking out.
NOTE: Works on Firefox (faster if Nightly), Chrome and Safari.
21. The Cursor Monster
The Cursor Monster is a little CSS3/JS toy that’s very simple, but a joy to play with. Made by Simurai, you basically feed it your cursor – try it, and you’ll fall in love with this cute beastie!
22. Movie posters
These movie posters, made by Marco Kuiper, are a great example of pretty powerful CSS3 animation and 3D effects. The perspective, transform and transition properties have been used to create a 3D animation effect when you hover over the movie posters.
NOTE: This demo only works on WebKit-based browsers, which include Safari and Chrome. Alternatively, you can watch it on the YouTube video above.
Words: John Galantini, Aaron Kitney and the Creative Bloq staff
John Galantini is a freelance web developer based in Hampshire whose clients include Sky, Vodafone, Sapient Nitro and most recetly, Burberry. He specialises in responsive, front-end development, using HTML5, CSS3 and a little bit of jQuery.
Aaron Kitney is a freelance graphic designer and art director based in London and Vancouver. He specialises in branding, identity, web design, publication design, album covers, packaging and book design.