Interested in building a carousel but don’t know where to start? You’re in the perfect place! Today we’ll explore the best CSS and JavaScript carousel tutorials Envato Tuts+.
What is a carousel?
What do we mean when we talk about carousels in UI design? It's a pattern that contains a set of elements that you can access by cycling through them. Such elements can be images, videos, text, or any other custom markup.
By default, some of these elements are visible. Others appear with different types of animations like slide, fade, and parallax.
The classic Bootstrap carousel component
A CSS carousel can support different types of navigation. These include swipe navigation, dot navigation, arrow navigation, and keyboard navigation.
A slider or a slideshow are other names for a carousel. Technically speaking, there might be differences between all these terms. However, most people consider them as the same thing.
For example, the top carousel JS libraries use different names for building the same result.
Galleries and lightboxes
Apart from sliders and slideshows, you’ll also come across galleries. Think of a gallery as a carousel that contains images. Most of the time these appear in a grid structure.
Many times a gallery is also presented inside a lightbox.
What is a carousel on a website used for?
Carousels are often found on the front pages of website. They serve a variety of purposes, from aesthetic enhancement to functional content delivery.
Here are a few ways you might find them in UI design:
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For highlighting key content. Carousels are excellent for drawing attention to specific items or features. An eCommerce site might use a carousel to spotlight best-sellers, deals, or arrivals.
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For optimizing space. They provide a solution to the challenge of limited space. By rotating content, carousels allow you to show more in a compact area. This prevents users from scrolling way too much.
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For enhancing user engagement. The dynamic nature of carousels can make a website more interactive and appealing. This can increase user engagement and encourage visitors to spend more time on the site.
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For storytelling and sequential content. Carousels can tell a story or present sequential information in an organized fashion. Think of a step-by-step guide or a series of related articles.
Now let's get to our roundup of CSS carousel and JS carousel tutorials available on Envato Tuts+.
10 CSS and JavaScript carousel tutorials
From tutorials on how to use Bootstrap carousels to various JavaScript carousel libraries, we have it all on Tuts+! Let's explore some top-performing and easy-to-follow tutorials for creating a carousel in CSS:
1. Pure CSS carousel slideshow
Did you know that you can build a carousel in CSS only?
The demo below shows how to achieve it by taking advantage of the CSS checkbox hack technique. It’s fully functional and supports:
- arrow navigation
- dot navigation
- thumbnail navigation
- keyboard navigation
2. Vanilla JavaScript carousel (14 lines of code!)
In this exercise, instructor Jemima Abu goes through a quick way to build a simple, scrollable JavaScript carousel. It just takes a few lines of code!
3. Vanilla JavaScript full-screen slideshow
This exercise describes how to create a full-screen JavaScript carousel. Every time we hover over it, the default cursor turns into a navigation arrow.
Depending on the cursor position, the next or previous arrow displays. Upon clicking on it, the next or previous slide comes into view.
4. Responsive slider with Owl.js
This tutorial shows how to use Owl.js (one of the top carousel JS libraries) to build a full-screen slider.
Going a bit further, it also shows how to animate the text elements of each active slide sequentially by using a few of the JS carousel events.
As a bonus, this slider JS carousel tutorial covers how to adapt the dots position based on the height of the contents of the active slide.
5. Responsive image gallery with slick.js
In this exercise, we're using slick.js. It's another popular JavaScript carousel that we'll use to develop an image gallery.
- On the desktop mode: the left side shows the thumbnail images, the right side is the featured/active slide.
- On the mobile mode: the thumbnail images appear either below the featured one or don’t appear at all.
To create this effect, we're setting two independent carousels and synchronizing them. This is thanks to slick’s synchronization feature.
6. Responsive slider with Swiper.js
Swiper.js is another well-known choice for building a complex carousel in JavaScript. In this exercise, we're incorporating a swiper.js slider as a part of an asymmetric layout.
7. How to build a responsive image slider with Swiper.js (video tutorial)
More Swiper.js for you, because it’s that good. Watch Adi Purdila as he demonstrates how to build a couple of Swiper carousels.
If you're a fan of web design video tutorials, then you'll love this one. You'll be able to easily build a carousel with JS.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the Tuts+ YouTube channel for plenty more like this!
8. Responsive Bootstrap lightbox gallery
You might be familiar with Bootstrap, the most popular front-end development framework. In this exercise, we extend its functionality by building a lightbox gallery.
In fact, we aren’t building anything new. We're just customizing and combining existing Bootstrap components.
This tutorial is a solid option to build a carousel in CSS and HTML.
9. Responsive UIkit lightbox gallery
UIkit is another modular front-end framework. In this tutorial, we extend its lightbox component by adding dot navigation.
10. Draggable image gallery and a custom lightbox with GSAP
GSAP is a popular JavaScript animation library. Thanks to its Draggable plugin, we’re able to implement a draggable image gallery that supports a responsive lightbox gallery.
So, if you're after an animated carousel in JavaScript, this tutorial might suit your needs.
Explore more carousel tutorials and plugins
We hope this list of CSS carousel tutorials brings you enough inspo to build your own. Enjoy the demos and check out the associated tutorials. Also, be sure to follow Envato Tuts+ on CodePen for more creative pens.
If you need a JavaScript carousel for your WordPress site, Envato provides heaps of them to choose from.
Want to show off testimonials, the latest blog posts, your best images, or other media on your website? There is a WordPress slider/gallery plugin out there that’s right for you.
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