Day 66: individual transform properties

posted on 26.12.2022

It’s time to get me up to speed with modern CSS. There’s so much new in CSS that I know too little about. To change that I’ve started #100DaysOfMoreOrLessModernCSS. Why more or less modern CSS? Because some topics will be about cutting-edge features, while other stuff has been around for quite a while already, but I just have little to no experience with it.

From now on you can transform elements with the translate, rotate, and scale properties.

Let’s say you apply several transforms to an element, and on :hover and :focus you only want to change one of them, for example, scale.

<button>Transform</button>

button {
  transform: translateX(20px) rotate(15deg) scale(1); 
}

button:is(:hover, :focus) {
  transform: scale(2); 
}

That doesn't work as expected because by setting transform: scale(2) you're overwriting all the previously defined transforms. To fix that, you have to repeat the other transforms.

button {
  transform: translateX(20px) rotate(15deg) scale(1); 
}

button:is(:hover, :focus) {
  transform: translateX(20px) rotate(15deg) scale(2); 
}

That can cause a lot of repetition in your code.

Individual transform properties fix that issue because now you can use translate, rotate, and scale separately.

button {
  translate: 20px 0;
  rotate: 15deg;
  scale: 1; 
}

button:is(:hover, :focus) {
  scale: 2; 
}

See on CodePen

Day 66: individual transform properties

Further reading