Alternatively, you can use a before. And swap the orientation

Mr Graham,

Haters gonna hate. I really enjoyed the article.

Amazing stuff as always, Ana! Thanks for sharing.

Explained in detail in this article from 2018.

The “animate transform, but abruptly flip transform-origin” tactic can help with a lot of cool effects in 3D as well, like in this series of demos from early 2016:

• blocks

• flair

• [this one had a vice]https://codepen.io/thebabydino/pen/qZJevJ)

• a matter of timing

• snake motion

Seconding that I’d read it if you wrote up an article talking us through how to tighten this up! I’d love to use it and I’d REALLY love for it to be as clean as possible.

Ha, yeah. My gut reaction felt right but I decided on a different approach when my styles started getting messy. And, of course, I started realizing where I went wrong with the background approach when I was already waist-deep in transform. That’s the funny thing about hindsight, but also the great thing about CSS — so many ways to achieve similar things. What’s even funnier is that I landed on the same approach Adam did!

The trick is to use a transition on background-size, but not background-position. This way, you can change the background position before the background size animation even begins, and the user will never be able to tell, because the background will always be either completely filled in or completely empty! :D

Codepen: https://codepen.io/sloanfinger/pen/XWePVGj

Cool dude. Maybe you can write your own post walking through your thought process to make it better. I’d read that.

The link basically has to be a button. Having it in a block of text breaks it,especially if the link text wraps on to a new line.

If you hover over it quickly repeatedly, the transition jumps to the end before restarting.

… Using borders, or better yet, inset box shadows and expanding their size might help fix the first issue.

Better (tighter) transition statements will probably help the second issue.

I appreciate how this article shows both the thought process and, more importantly, the parts that didn’t work.

A lot of authors like to be the smartest person in the room where the answers just come to them in divine inspiration, so it’s refreshing to see that someone shares my “throw stuff at the wall and fail forward” method I use.