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This is a full syntax guide and interactive CSS animations tutorial for beginners. Use it as reference to learn the different parts of the CSS animations spec.

Browser performance has come a long way in the past 10 years. It used to be a lot more challenging to add interactive animations to web pages due to the potential for rendering and performance issues. But nowadays, CSS animations can be used much more freely and the syntax is generally much easier to learn compared to CSS features like grid or flexbox.

There are different features that are part of the W3C CSS animation specification. Some easier to use than others. This CSS keyframe animations tutorial will go through all the syntax, including each of the different properties. I’ll include interactive demos to help you grasp what’s possible with CSS animations.

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. This can be any name I want, is case sensitive, and must abide by the custom identifier rules in CSS. This custom name must match the name used in the

In my example, you’ll notice I used percentages to define each of the keyframes in my animation. If my animation includes keyframes that equal

In the demo, I’ve included a button that resets the animation. I’ll explain later why this is needed. But for now, just know that this animation includes three keyframes that represent steps in this animation sequence: the start, the 50% step, and the end (i.e., 0%, 50%, and 100%). Each of these uses what’s called a keyframe selector along with curly braces to define the properties at that step.

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Syntax in this CSS animation tutorial, let’s take a look at the different animation properties that are defined on the element being animated.

At-rule — otherwise this name will do nothing. You can think of this like a function call in JavaScript. The function itself would be the

Property, no surprise, defines the amount of time an animation takes to run once from start to end. This value can be specified in seconds or milliseconds, as shown below:

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Property in action in the following CodePen demo. In this demo, you can choose how long you want the animation to last. Try entering various values in either seconds or milliseconds, then use the “Animate the Box” button to run the animation.

, which is not as obvious in its meaning as the previous two properties, is used to define the manner in which the CSS animation progresses. That might not be the clearest explanation, but the syntax might help clarify.

Most of the values are relatively easy to grasp by their names, but you can see how they differ by using the following interactive demo:

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Function. Two of the arguments can be negative, and two are constrained to decimal values between 0 and 1. For a decent explanation of how these types of timing functions work, you can check out this article or this interactive tool.

Try selecting an integer along with a jumpterm (or try it with no jumpterm) to see how the different keywords differ with different integer values. Apparently negative integers are permitted but I don’t see any difference between 0 and any negative value.

In some cases, you’ll be happy if an animation runs once, but sometimes you want an animation to run multiple times. The

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The above code runs through the animation three and a half times. That is, three full iterations followed by one final iteration that stops exactly halfway through.

Property (discussed next), because an animation that runs from the beginning only is not extremely useful if it runs more than once.

You can try the demo below which allows you to select a fractional value for the iteration count, so you can see the effect:

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Property is not extremely useful in a static CSS environment but might come in handy when writing animations that are interactive via JavaScript or even CSS.

By default, any given animation is in the “running” state. But you can use JavaScript to toggle the property’s value. You could even feasibly use an interactive CSS feature like

It’s important to note that the delay occurs only on the first iteration, not each iteration. You can try this out using the interactive demo below:

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The demo gives you the option to change the iteration value as well as the delay, so you can see that the delay doesn’t affect any subsequent iterations – only the first.

. You’ll notice the negative delay works almost like going forwards in a time machine – the animation begins part way through rather than at the beginning.

The final longhand property that I’ll cover in this CSS animations tutorial is one that I used in the previous demo. You’ll notice that when the animation stops the final iteration, the box remains where it is. This is accomplished using

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This property sets how an animation applies styles to the targeted element before and after its execution. That’s a little hard to grasp conceptually, so I’ll cover the meaning of each value; then you can compare the values using the interactive demo.

The final demo in this CSS animations tutorial will make things a little clearer, but this one might take a lot of playing around before you really get what it does and how it achieves it.

You’ll notice that the demo lets you adjust the fill mode, delay, direction, and number of iterations, as all of these can have an effect on the appearance. I’ve also added a different background color to the animated box in the first keyframe, which again helps to make the fill mode values a little more clear. If you still don’t quite get how

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I’ve covered eight different properties in this CSS animation tutorial for beginners and I encourage you to use the long hand. This will make it easier for you to see the explicit values set.

In all honesty, that’s a lot of information in a single line. I would recommend using the shorthand if the declaration doesn’t include all the properties, but maybe only three or four of them.

One final feature it’s good to be aware of is that you have the option to apply multiple animations to a single object by comma-separating the animations.

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Here, I’ve defined two different animations that would map to two different sets of keyframes, but would apply to the same object. That same code could be written in longhand as:

Notice how each property includes two values separated by commas. In this instance, the shorthand would almost definitely be easier to read and maintain.

If you’re a CSS beginner and this CSS animations tutorial was your first dip into experimenting with moving stuff on web pages, I hope the lesson was comprehensive enough. You might even be able to incorporate CSS variables with animations to make them even more powerful.

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👉 One final warning: Use animation in moderation and remember that some web users might be negatively affected by blinking colors and other fast-moving objects.

With practice, the syntax and the concepts for building CSS animations will stick with you and you’ll definitely benefit from fiddling around with the code in the different demos.

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