A while ago (I think it was around the release of the iPad), the Apple.com website got a new navigation menu on the top of the page. This menu bar was a lot darker than the previous, grey version, but looks just as great. One thing which I noticed about the navigation, is that the buttons are created out of images. That's the moment I thought we could do better, using some nifty CSS3 techniques. So today, I present you the Apple.com navigation menu created using only CSS3.

Since this demo heavily relies on CSS3, make sure you view it using a CSS3 compatible browser. The Webkit browsers (Safari and Chrome) display the effect the best, followed by the latest version of Firefox. Opera and IE don't display everything correct, but the menu seems to be working.

  

The menu on the Apple.com website also updated their search suggestion, which hasn't been implemented in this demo (yet), but I might create that later. For now, let's check out all the CSS3 you'll need to be able to create this fancy looking navigation menu.

Just like I said in my previous article; Since Firefox 4 was relesed, loads of new (CSS) features were released into the wild. Next to the :any() CSS selector, another cool CSS feature was added to the Gecko engine that I wanted to check out, and is called the element() function.

According to the specification, this function does the following: Starting in Gecko 2.0, you can use the element() CSS function to use an arbitrary HTML element as a background image for background and background-image. That sounds pretty interesting! Take note this only works in the latest version from Firefox, and still needs the -moz- vendor prefix (so the complete function call will be -moz-element()).

  

You can directly view the source from the demo to check what kind of small experiments (or checking out some bad practices) I did, but I would recommend you to read why the experiments are interesting.

Since Firefox 4 was relesed, loads of new (CSS) features were released into the wild. Ofcourse, this is a great thing, since Firefox has a rock solid place as 2nd most popular web browser. More people will actually be able to see all the nifty stuff you'll create using CSS.

I recently came accross a CSS selector that was included in Firefox 4 (and is added to Webkit (nightly) as well), called the :any() selector. We'll take a look at what this selector does, and why you would want to use it.

Be aware that the :any() is not part of the CSS3 specification (yet), but since Webkit already implemented it, I'm pretty sure others will follow as well. Also, to make it work in Firefox, use the -moz- vendor prefix, resulting in :-moz-any (-webkit- vendor prefix for Webkit). So let's see what this :any() selector can do for you.

When I just finished creating the animated 3d helix, I came up with an idea that would look a lot like that one. Instead of having the flip animation on top of each other, I wanted to have them placed next to each other. This looks a lot like an animation most of you will know; a rotating billboard.

When you only show two images, it would be pretty simple since the CSS would look a lot like the CSS from my previous demo. That's why I wanted to take it just a little step further and let the billboard show three images.

Take note this demo only works in Safari (tested on a Mac) and Safari for iOS (tested on a iPhone). I've made a reference video that you can see below in case you don't have those browsers.

  

I know the animation isn't fully perfect, and I'm not really sure if it's my piece of code, or the Webkit engine doesn't properly animate I expect it to. Anyhow, let's take a look under the hood and see how it works!

One of the most popular articles on Marcofolio.net in 2010 was the 3d animation using pure CSS3. In my opinion, it was one of the best articles for myself as well, since I learned some pretty neat stuff about CSS3 and 3d capibilities.

Shortly after I placed my article online, Chris Spooner wrote a very cool article called Super Cool CSS Flip Effect with Webkit Animation. It showed me some great other 3d techniques that can be achieved using pure CSS3.

Those two articles inspired me to create yet another very cool 3d CSS demo, that I like to call an Animated CSS3 helix using 3d transforms.

Simply go to the demo page and be amazed! I'm pretty sure you never thought something like that would be possible using pure CSS. Take note this demo only works in Safari (latest version). For those viewers that don't have that browser, I've added a video below.

  

For those of you who start digging in the source code directly, I'm warning you: You'll probably find one of the strangest HTML/CSS you've seen. This is purely created, just to achieve the desired effect. Now let's take a look under the hood and see how it works!