CSS Linear Gradients

Gradients can make your website or application impressive and enhance its feel of it.

They also can be terrible and over the top (personal opinion, look at my demo… 🤷‍♂️)

Today we’ll be looking into CSS Linear Gradients, which we can use, and how to use them.

Types of CSS Gradients permalink

There are two types of gradients we can leverage in CSS these two are:

• Linear: From one side to the other side
• Radial: Round gradient

Best to view them in action and see what they can do.

Also, check my Article on Radial Gradients

CSS Linear Gradient permalink

Let’s start with the linear gradient; this one, by default, goes from top to bottom and accepts colors in whatever type you like (RGB,CMYK,hex,named).

.basic-linear {
  background-image: linear-gradient(#ff0000, #ffff00);
  background-image: linear-gradient(red, yellow);
  background-image: linear-gradient(rgb(255, 0, 0), rgb(255, 255, 0));
}

The above will render the same gradient a red top that flows into a yellow bottom.

Linear Gradient Left to Right permalink

What if we want the gradient to move from left to right?

We can pass an additional first argument.

.left-linear {
  background-image: linear-gradient(to right, red, yellow);
}

Alternatively, we can define this by giving a percentage.

.left-linear {
  background-image: linear-gradient(90deg, red, yellow);
}

By doing so, we can also make the gradient diagonal.

.diagonal-linear {
  background-image: linear-gradient(45deg, red, yellow);
  background-image: linear-gradient(to top right, red, yellow);
}

Using Multiple Colours permalink

Another thing we can do is keep adding colors!

.multi-linear {
  background-image: linear-gradient(45deg, red, yellow, green, blue);
}

We can also state where each color should begin like so:

.multi-linear {
  background-image: linear-gradient(45deg, red 10%, yellow 50%, blue 60%);
}

Linear Gradient Transparency permalink

This is one of the options I use transparency in making something go from a solid color to a fully transparent one.

Let’s try black for this one.

.transparent-linear {
  background-image: linear-gradient(
    to right,
    rgba(0, 0, 0, 0),
    rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)
  );
}

Repeating Linear Gradient permalink

Something that I used in making CSS images is a repeating gradient:

.repeating-gradient {
  background-image: repeating-linear-gradient(red 10%, yellow 20%);
}

An excellent tool for making awesome gradients and directly getting the code is CSSGradient.io!

Have a look at this Codepen.

See the Pen CSS Linear Gradients by Chris Bongers (@rebelchris) on CodePen.

Browser Support permalink

CSS Gradients are very well supported. Just Opera Mini is not working, and not all browsers support the complete set of options.

Thank you for reading, and let’s connect! permalink

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