Crystal Faceting
About Crystal Faceting
Crystal Faceting is a checkbox built with a keyframe animation, gradient fills, transforms and layered shadows. Its stylesheet runs to 157 lines across 23 rules, declaring 27 distinct properties. It styles checked state explicitly, so the component responds to interaction rather than sitting still. The animation is driven by keyframe sequences named crystal-refract, facet-shine, ray-emit and spectrum-flow, which you can retime or remove without touching the rest of the styling. Every format shown on this page is the same component, so you can take CSS and Tailwind depending on how your project is set up. Nothing is minified and nothing depends on a framework.
When to use
- Settings panels and forms, where state has to read at a glance, where a luxury and premium checkbox fits the surrounding design
- A single prominent checkbox rather than a row of them, since the crystal-refract animation runs continuously and several at once compete with each other
- Palettes built around cyan, blue and white, where this checkbox can be dropped in without retheming
- Places where one control is meant to be memorable, since 157 lines of CSS is a real investment for a single element
How it works
The base rule sets the shape with border-radius, display, height and position. The fill is a gradient rather than a flat colour, so it is a single background declaration with no image to load. 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. The looping motion comes from crystal-refract, facet-shine, ray-emit and spectrum-flow. Changing the animation-duration is usually the only edit needed to make it faster or calmer.
Accessibility
No focus style is defined. Add one before shipping, or keyboard users lose track of position. Animates without a prefers-reduced-motion guard. Wrap the animation in that query if motion sensitivity matters to your audience. Those are 2 things to fix before this ships in front of users.
Browser support
Complex clip-path shapes were unreliable before Safari 14.
Related components
Frequently asked questions
Crystal Faceting
What is inside Crystal Faceting
Crystal Faceting is a CSS checkbox built with a keyframe animation, gradient fills, transforms, defined in 157 lines across 23 selectors.
Techniques used
Animations defined: crystal-refractfacet-shineray-emitspectrum-flow
CSS properties in this component
align-itemsanimationbackgroundborder-radiusbottombox-shadowclip-pathcolorcursordisplayfont-sizefont-weightgapheightinputjustify-contentleftopacityoverflowpositionrighttoptransformtransitionuser-selectwidthz-indexAccessibility check2 to fix
- No focus style is defined. Add one before shipping, or keyboard users lose track of position.
- Animates without a prefers-reduced-motion guard. Wrap the animation in that query if motion sensitivity matters to your audience.
Browser support notes
- Complex clip-path shapes were unreliable before Safari 14.
These notes are generated by reading this component's own source, so they describe what it actually does rather than what a template says. Copy the code above in CSS, Tailwind and adapt it freely.