Retro Arcade Button

About Retro Arcade Button

Retro Arcade Button is a button built with gradient fills, transforms, layered shadows and pseudo elements. Its stylesheet runs to 36 lines across 4 rules, declaring 20 distinct properties. It styles hover and active states explicitly, so the component responds to interaction rather than sitting still. Every format shown on this page is the same component, so you can take HTML and CSS depending on how your project is set up. Nothing is minified and nothing depends on a framework.

When to use

• Sites with a strong established look, where a neutral control would sit awkwardly, where a retro and arcade button fits the surrounding design
• Repeated use across a page, since there is no animation to become tiring when several appear together
• Palettes built around yellow, red and black, where this button can be dropped in without retheming

How it works

The base rule sets the shape with border-radius, height, padding and position. The fill is a gradient rather than a flat colour, so it is a single background declaration with no image to load. A pseudo element carries part of the effect, which keeps the markup to one element while giving the CSS a second surface to animate. Movement is done with transforms rather than by changing position or size, which is what keeps it smooth: transforms are composited and do not force the browser to lay the page out again. State changes are eased with a transition, so hovering does not snap.

Accessibility

Built on a native <button> element, so keyboard focus and screen reader semantics work without extra attributes. No focus style is defined. Add one before shipping, or keyboard users lose track of position. That is one thing to fix before this ships in front of users.

Browser support

Everything this component uses has been supported across browsers for years, so no fallback is needed.

Related components

Frequently asked questions