First of all, you need to know that CSS defines two kinds of gradients:

• Linear Gradients (down/up/left/right/diagonally)
• Radial Gradients (defined by their center)

I’m only focusing on linear gradients in this post.

Before you create the linear gradient, you need to decide two things:

• What colors you will use. Those are your “color stops.”
• The starting point and direction of  your gradient. (Do you want the colors to go left-right? Up-down? Angled from corner to corner?)

TYPES OF GRADIENTS

Top to Bottom (the default)

Create a div. Inside this div, your selector will be “background” and its’ property will be “linear-gradient”. The value of “linear-gradient” will be the color stops.

I use hex values for my color stops to have more control over the exact shades. Here’s a resource for finding hex codes:

Here’s the default syntax:

#mydiv {
background: linear-gradient(blue, green);
}

It’s actually pretty straightforward, huh?

Now we can try some other kinds of transitions:

Left-right, transitioning from blue to green:

#mydiv {
background: linear-gradient(to right, blue , green);
}

Diagonally:

You can make the gradient display diagonally by indicating the horizontal and vertical starting positions:

#mydiv {
background: linear-gradient(to bottom right, blue, green);
}

Angled: (to top, to bottom, to left, to right, to bottom right, etc.)

The angle is specified by degrees between the horizontal line and the gradient line:

#mydiv {
background: linear-gradient(-90deg, blue, green);
}

Top-bottom, transitioning from blue to green to orange:

#mydiv {
background: linear-gradient(blue, green, orange);
}

My own gradient background goes left to right, and I specified that I wanted the first color to take up the first 50% of the gradient space.

Here’s my code:

background: linear-gradient(to right, #57BBBF 50% , #5798bf, #577dbf, #5759bf, #6f57bf, #9457bf, #da5cdb);

You can add transparency, by using the “rgba() function” to define the color stops. To define the amount of opacity or transparency, the last value in the function is  either a 0 or 1. (0 indicates full transparency, 1 indicates no transparency (fully opaque).

This next gradient starts from the left as fully transparent, then transitions to full opaque (non-transparent) blue:

#mydiv {
background: linear-gradient(to right, rgba(255,0,0,0), rgba(255,0,0,1));
}

I hope you try some of these yourself and get creative, and have fun with them. There’s no limit to what you can do with gradients.

Questions? Contact me:

[email protected]

or

My Contact Page

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I developed Image and Aspect because I believe that professionals need to have an impactful web presence. One that showcases their unique talents, skills, and abilities as well as their values and style. A presence that focuses on social engagement and connection.

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Diane M. Metcalf, M.S.