Animated Radio Tab Toggles
2021-01-05
In this demo tutorial, we are making the assumption that we need to create a radio slide toggle for our made-up payment options. For this we want to display 3 simple payment choices to the user:
- One-time payment
- Recurring payment
- Free tier payment
The Final Demo
Let’s get started with the base skeleton.
The HTML
There isn't anything special happening here. We just contain all our labels
and inputs
into a .radio-toggles
wrapper, make sure those labels
are each properly connected to their corresponding inputs
, and then add an empty .slide-item
element (more on that later).
<div class="radio-toggles">
<input type="radio" id="option-1" name="radio-options">
<label for="option-1">One-Time</label>
<input type="radio" id="option-2" name="radio-options" checked>
<label for="option-2">Recurring</label>
<input type="radio" id="option-3" name="radio-options">
<label for="option-3">Free</label>
<div class="slide-item"></div>
</div>
The CSS
Now for the main event – the CSS. First we want to style the wrapper that holds all of our pieces together. You can tweak this to your liking, but I prefer a simple and clean style:
.radio-toggles {
align-items: center;
background: #eee;
border: 1px solid lightgrey;
border-radius: 9999px;
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
margin: 20px auto;
max-width: 400px;
overflow: hidden;
padding: 4px;
position: relative;
}
Next, we “hide” (only visually) the default radio
inputs:
input[type="radio"] {
left: -9999px;
position: absolute;
z-index: -1;
}
Then we give the corresponding label
elements a little spacing and breathing room:
label {
cursor: pointer;
padding: 10px 20px;
text-align: center;
width: 33.33%;
z-index: 2;
}
Remember that .slide-item
I referenced earlier? That element will be the visual “slider” that animates between the individual radio options. We style that like so:
.slide-item {
background: white;
border-radius: 9999px;
box-shadow: 0 2px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.15);
height: calc(100% - 8px);
left: calc(33.33% + 4px);
position: absolute;
width: calc(33.33% - 8px);
transition: left .4s;
z-index: 0;
}
You'll notice the left
, height
, and width
properties utilize the CSS calc
attributes – this just gives some much needed padding and visual clean-up to the whole tabbed interface.
For the finishing touches, we just need to tell the .slide-item
where to position itself based on which radio
input is currently selected:
input[type="radio"]:nth-of-type(1):checked ~ .slide-item {
left: 4px;
}
input[type="radio"]:nth-of-type(3):checked ~ .slide-item {
left: calc(66.66% + 4px);
}
That's pretty much it! You now have a fully functional, animated toggle slider with just a set of simple radio
inputs and pure CSS.