Create CSS effect to “Shine” a button border

June 18, 2017

Imagine that you have an HTML button or element on a page and you would like an effect where the border shines all around the perimeter. this provides an excellent example of an effect of the entire element shining, and this post will largely be based on that code.

Animations

CSS has the concept of an animation, to define it, use the following syntax:

[code lang=“css”] .growOnHover:hover:after { animation: growAnimation 1s; }




Here is the HTML referencing this:

[code lang="HTML"]
<a href="#" class="growOnHover">Grow</a>

Tge “growAnimation” refers to a KeyFrame:

[code lang=“HTML”] @keyframes growAnimation { from {width: 100px; height: 100px;} to {width: 110px; height: 110px;} }




# The effect

The effect that I want is for a light to run around the circumference of the button when it's hovered over.  In this case, instead of animating from .. to, we can specify at which stage a particular section of the animation kicks in.

[code lang="css"]

.borderShine:after {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 5;
  height: 5;
  opacity: 0;  

  border-radius: 1;

  background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 10);
}

.borderShine:hover:after {
  animation: shineAnimation 2s 1;  
}

@keyframes shineAnimation {
  0%   {left: 0; top: 0; width: 2; height: 2; opacity: 0}
  10%  {width: 100; height: 2}  
  20%  {left: 98; top: 0; width: 2; height: 2}
  25%  {opacity: 1;}
  30%  {height: 100}
  40%  {left: 98; top: 98; height: 2}
  50%  {left: 0; top: 98; width: 100}
  55%  {opacity: 1;}
  60%  {left: 0; top: 98; width: 2; height: 2}
  70%  {left: 0; top: 0; width: 2; height: 100}
  80%  {left: 0; top: 0; width: 2; height: 2}
  100% {opacity: 0;}
}

There are a few useful things to remember here:

The animation is a transition between the state that the screen is currently in, and the state that you want it to be in; so, for example, the opacity set to 1 at 25% will cause the white bar to gradually appear over the steps between the two. The reason that I’ve set opacity twice here is to prevent it from transitioning back too soon.
All the figures above are absolute (as my buttons are 100 x 100).

References

http://jsfiddle.net/AntonTrollback/nqQc7/

https://css-tricks.com/useful-nth-child-recipies/

https://css-tricks.com/using-multi-step-animations-transitions/