CSS Gradients

Styling is an integral part of the web, and one of the fundamental building blocks of a website is CSS. Web design has transformed over the years and the development of CSS played a huge role in this transformation - websites have moved from plaintext to more interactive and visually appealing designs.

CSS is often referred to as the flesh of a website because it covers the less attractive part, HTML, which is considered the skeleton of a web page. Cascading style sheets offer various features for styling and laying out web pages, an example is CSS gradients.

What is CSS gradient, and how can it be used for styling web pages? First, we’ll go through a brief history of CSS before we discuss what CSS gradients are about.

CSS is a declarative-style or a stylesheet language used to design website content. The idea of CSS was proposed by Haykon Wium Lie in 1994.

The first version of CSS was created in 1996, and could only be used to perform basic styling like changing text colours, fonts, background and layout control.

CSS2, was released in 1998 accompanied with new features such as positioning, improved layout control, and introduction of media types for various devices.

CSS 2.1, was released in 2001 to improve the specifications of CSS2 providing stability and browser compatibility.

CSS3, which is the ongoing version, started around 1999 and was designed using a modular approach.

This approach structures CSS3 into different modules that represent features or a set of related features, that can be developed, reviewed and modified independently. This allows developers to focus on updating specific features enabling faster development.

Colour is an essential part of CSS because it's how we notice things displayed on a website. The role of a colour scheme is crucial for brand identity, user experience, accessibility and it can also influence emotions of users and so on.

Styling in web design or development is important for reasons that include, but are not limited to;

Enhanced user experience: Visually appealing websites enhance user-experience. A well-designed website not only attracts users but makes navigating the website easy.

Improved website appearance: CSS styling improves the appearance of websites by allowing consistent styling across web pages, responsive designs, visual effects, etc

Responsive Design: CSS makes it easy to create responsive design for different screen sizes and devices using media queries. Flexbox and grid can also be used to create layouts that adjust dynamically on designs and desktop devices, enhancing user-experience.

Cross-browser Compatibility: CSS helps reduce inconsistencies in websites by helping users create consistent appearance of design across different web browsers.

Accessibility: When working with gradients it is important that the gradient isn't overwhelming such that it becomes hard to read or see the elements on top of or around it.

It is important to choose colours that keeps text readable and doesn't make your website visually displeasing, ensuring that people with visual impairments can easily read and interact with the elements on the website.

Now that we’ve gone through a brief introduction of CSS and its importance, let’s go through a brief walk through of CSS-Gradient. But before we proceed, what is gradient?

Gradient In design is the gradual transition between colours or shades. This visual effect where two or more colours fade into each other adds depth, and dimension to designs.

Gradients deliver a smooth transition between colours and shade, and also give a soothing feel that makes designs more visually appealing.

Types of Gradients

The are different types of gradients, including;

• Linear Gradient: This is the basic type of gradient that creates a transition between two or more colours that follow a straight line that's either vertical, horizontal or diagonal.

Image

• Radial Gradient: When applying radial gradient, the colour transitions in a circular shape extending from the centre. It is used for creating circular patterns or elliptical shapes.

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• Angular Gradient: Angular gradient or conic gradient creates a 3D effect, and colour transitions wrap around a central point just like in a colour wheel. It is used in pie charts, and designs elements that have rotational or circular colour transitions.

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• Diamond Gradient: In a diagonal gradient, colour spreads diagonally from a central point, forming a diamond shaped transition of colours.

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• Mesh Gradient: Mesh gradient is more complex, and it involves blending multiple colours in different directions.

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Freeform Gradient: The use of freeform gradient allows creativity in terms of how colours can be placed in any point. It provides control over the spread and blending of each colour resulting in more artistic and flexible designs.

• Multiple Gradient: Multiple gradients involves applying multiple basic gradients to a single shape to create a complex gradient pattern. For instance, combining radial and linear gradient to create a more intricate design.

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Gradients in CSS is a visual effect that displays smooth transition between multiple hues of colours or shades. They can be applied in background, text and can be used to create complex colour combinations to enhance the visual aspect of web pages.

Gradients are treated like images which is why it uses background-image property as shown in the image below.

There are different types of gradients as mentioned above, however, the three primary gradients in CSS include;

• Linear Gradient

• Radial Gradient

• Conic Gradient

Here’s how to achieve the different types of gradients in CSS. In the example we are simply going to create a div with width and height, and then we’re going to add these gradients to show what they look like on screen.

Linear Gradient

In this example, we styled our div, we set the background-image to green as fallback background colour (in case the gradient doesn’t render), and then used background-image to apply linear-gradient.

The linear gradient changes from a light yellow to green smoothly. There is no specified direction so by default, it transitions from top to bottom.

Let's look at another example by specifying direction.

Code breakdown;

The background-image property sets an image or gradient as the background of an element.

The linear-gradient function generates the linear gradient

Colours are used in the gradient, there's the starting colour which is the light yellow in our example and the ending colour which is green.

The comma (,) separates the different colours, and direction which guides the gradient on how to transition.

You can add as many colours, and different directions like “to top right”, “to top left”, “To bottom right”, etc.

You can also specify the exact angle for the direction of gradient, and this is measured using degrees.

    background-image:linear-gradient(
        45deg,
        rgb(246, 255, 0),green
    )

You can also create complex gradients by specifying multiple colours stops (the exact point where you want the colour to change) and direction.

Radial Gradient

Radial gradient starts from a single point and spread outwards,

Let's look at another example using different values.

The circle specifies that the gradient should be in a circular shape.

closest-side defines the size of the gradient circle so that the circle's radius extends from the centre of the element to the nearest edge. In other words, irrespective of the size the gradient will always extend or stretch to touch the edge of the element's container.

Conic Gradient

The example below shows a conic gradient with three colours.

Other options for controlling gradient patterns include;

Repeating linear gradients

Repeating radial gradients

Repeating conic radial gradients

Using "repeating-linear-gradient" or "repeating-radial-gradient" allows you to create patterns that repeat indefinitely, enabling more intricate and creative designs

• Understanding the different types of gradients

• Use gradients in a subtle manner

• Use fallbacks for browsers that do not support gradients.

• Use Gradient generator to preview gradients before implementing.

• Test how gradients look on different devices.

There are different tools available for working with CSS gradients here are a few to consider.

Gradient Generator

Gradient generator tool helps users to create gradients by allowing them to define and customise colour transitions. It also generates the corresponding CSS code which can be used in the style sheet of a web project.

Examples of Gradient Generators include;

• Colorzilla

• Coolors

• Gradient Hunt

CSS Gradient Libraries

CSS Gradient libraries are collections of pre-designed gradient styles that can be customised or copied and added into a web project. This makes adding gradients to projects fast.

Examples of CSS Gradient Libraries include;

• Gradient background

• CSS Gradient

• Adobe Color

Learning Resources

Learning resources help newbies or seasoned designers/ developers learn and understand how to create and use gradients effectively. Examples of useful resources include;

• MDN CSS Gradients

• w3schools

• CSS-Tricks

Accessibility Tool

Accessibility tools ensure that colour palettes generated are accessible to all users including users with visual impairments. For instance, the accessibility tool ensures that the colours meet accessibility standards or can also simulate what the web pages would look like to users with visual impairments, etc.

• Venngage

• Web Aim Contrast Checker

• Colour Contrast Analyzer

The visual representation of a website is crucial for any brand whether personal, small businesses, enterprise, and beyond. Websites may not need images, or animations for visual appeal, using gradients are a great and easy way to create websites that are not only visually appealing, but accessible and inclusive.