Christian Heilmann

The mystery of the rotating sidebar

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 at 11:41 am

Every since I played around with the sidebar here on the blog giving it a slight tilt in 3D I get a lot of questions how it was done. Well, there is no dark magic at play, just some 3D CSS transformations and a transition.

So I recorded a quick screencast showing you how it is done (also showing some of the Firefox devtools). You can see it on YouTube or in higher quality on vid.ly.

The code is very simple:

<div class="yui-b" id="sb">
  <div id="rot">
    ...
  </div>
</div>

#sb {
  position: relative;
  -webkit-perspective: 800px;
     -moz-perspective: 800px;
      -ms-perspective: 800px;
       -o-perspective: 800px;
          perspective: 800px;
}
#rot {
  -webkit-transform: rotateY(-15deg);
     -moz-transform: rotateY(-15deg);
      -ms-transform: rotateY(-15deg);
       -o-transform: rotateY(-15deg);
          transform: rotateY(-15deg);
  -webkit-transition: -webkit-transform 1s;
     -moz-transition: -moz-transform 1s;
      -ms-transition: -ms-transform 1s;
       -o-transition: -o-transform 1s;
          transition: transform 1s;
}
#rot:hover {
  -webkit-transform: rotateY(0deg);
     -moz-transform: rotateY(0deg);
      -ms-transform: rotateY(0deg);
       -o-transform: rotateY(0deg);
          transform: rotateY(0deg);
}

You can play with 3D transforms using the 3D CSS Tester and don’t forget that this month’s Mozilla Dev Derby is about 3D transforms.

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Check out the Dev Digest Newsletter I write every week for WeAreDevelopers. Latest issues:

160: Graphs and RAGs explained and VS Code extension hacks Graphs and RAG explained, how AI is reshaping UI and work, how to efficiently use Cursor, VS Code extensions security issues.
159: AI pipelines, 10x faster TypeScript, How to interview How to use LLMs to help you write code and how much electricity does that use? Is your API secure? 10x faster TypeScript thanks to Go!
158: 🕹️ Super Mario AI 🔑 API keys in LLMs 🤙🏾 Vibe Coding Why is AI playing Super Mario? How is hallucinating the least of our worries and what are rules for developing Safety Critical Code?
157: CUDA in Python, Gemini Code Assist and back-dooring LLMs We met with a CUDA expert from NVIDIA about the future of hardware, we look at how AI fails and how to play pong on 140 browser tabs.
156: Enterprise dead, all about Bluesky and React moves on! Learn about Bluesky as a platform, how to build a React App and how to speed up SQL. And play an impossible game in the browser.

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