Chrome-like Moving Highlight With CSS Gradients | Hacker News Reader

Chrome-like Moving Highlight With CSS Gradients

css-tricks.com

26 pointssome1else16 comments

Please don't start using this. It already bad enough with the Chrome. It's a nice effect but I don't consider it particularly nice nor user friendly eye candy.

It looks great. I see more and more UIs using this.

It looks good in Win7 too, I like how the colour of the glow is controlled by the application's icon.

The idea has been around in game user interfaces for a while. The mouse-trail dhtml animations were a plague, but this pertains to single elements, and may help elevate their importance in the visual hierarchy.

The element highlight has a purpose. It tells the user: You are currently hovering this and your next mouse-click will activate it.

How does highlighting only part of the hovered element help to "elevate" anything?

Bad enough with Chrome? Did you even notice it before you read the article?

I did.

What's the point?

You either apply this affect as subtly as chrome; then it does nothing for usability (neither positive, nor negative).

Or you apply it as visible as in this blog post; then it's distracting and hurts usability.

Either way I can't see why you'd bother. Unless you're a bored google chrome engineer...

I can't notice it on Chromium

It doesn't work for me on the article page itself, but it you view the demo (link at the bottom of the article) then you can see it working.

I think he's referring to the effect in the UI itself. I don't see it either, so it's probably limited to some platforms.

Ah fair point, I don't use Chromium so hadn't noticed whether or not the effect was present.

The page itself confused me though as I thought the inline images were meant to be working demos and they did nothing for me until I went to the demo page itself.

[edit] fixed typo

Why are the demos on these things always on another page behind another link?

I couldn't see it til I realised that it's only on inactive tabs.

Me neither, on Chrome and Windows 7.

This effect is in Chrome for Mac OS only (I assume Chromium as well - haven't used that on the Mac yet). I noticed it a while back in that version... it's subtle. You have to be looking at the tab to notice.

The effect doesn't appear in either Chrome or Chromium for Linux or Windows.

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