Create a slider with pure CSS

Step 1 - create your slider layout

First you need to create a space for your slider to go into, and of course, some slides!

<div class="slider-container">
<div class="slider">
<div class="slides">
<div id="slides__1" class="slide">
<span class="slide__text">1</span>
</div>
<div id="slides__2" class="slide">
<span class="slide__text">2</span>
</div>
<div id="slides__3" class="slide">
<span class="slide__text">3</span>
</div>
<div id="slides__4" class="slide">
<span class="slide__text">4</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
So here we have:

 slider-container is just the element on your site that you want the slider to go in.

 slider is like the 'screen', or the viewport that will display all your slides.

 slides will hold your slides. This is the element that actually scrolls to give the slider effect.

 slide is each individual slide. Note that you need the slide class, and a unique id for each one.

Then we need the CSS:

.slider-container {
background: linear-gradient(149deg, rgb(247, 0, 255) 0%, rgb(255, 145, 0) 100%);
display: flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
height: 100%;
}

.slider {
width: 100%;
max-width: 600px;
height: 400px;
 margin: 20px;
text-align: center;
border-radius: 20px;
position: relative;
}
slider-container can be anything - I've just used a flexbox to make it easy to centre the slider.
But if you prefer, you can use CSS Grid (it's a question of preferences, as we explained in
this CSS Grid Vs. Flexbox article)

slider just sets the size of your slider - you can adjust this to suit your needs.

Next, we'll style the slides element:

.slides {
display: flex;
overflow-x: scroll;
position: relative;
scroll-behavior: smooth;
scroll-snap-type: x mandatory;
}
OK, this is where the magic happens. If we set overflow-x to scroll, anything that doesn't fit
in our slider viewport will be accessible only by scrolling.

Setting scroll-behavior to smooth and scroll-snap-type to x mandatory means that if we jump-

link to any child element of slides, the browser will scroll to it smoothly, rather than just
jumping immediately to that element.

Right, next let's style the slides themselves:

.slide:nth-of-type(even) {
background-color: rgb(250, 246, 212);
}

.slide {
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
align-items: center;
flex-shrink: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 400px;
margin-right: 0px;
box-sizing: border-box;
background: white;
transform-origin: center center;
 transform: scale(1);
scroll-snap-align: center;
}

.slide__text {
font-size: 40px;
font-weight: bold;
font-family: sans-serif;
}
Match the size of slide to be the same as slider. The final three properties, transform-
origin, transform, and scroll-snap-align, are key. These ensure that when we jump-link to any
particular slide, the slide will 'snap' into the middle of the slider viewport.

OK, so far we have this:

If you click inside the slider, then press the arrow keys, you'll see the smooth scrolling and
snapping behaviour in action.

But of course we don't want our users to have to do this! We want to put some navigation
buttons on the slider instead - and we should probably get rid of that scrollbar too!

Step 2 - Adding the slider navigation buttons

In the HTML, I've added two a elements to each slide:

<div class="slider-container">
<div class="slider">
<div class="slides">
<div id="slides__1" class="slide">
<span class="slide__text">1</span>
<a class="slide__prev" href="#slides__4" title="Next"></a>
<a class="slide__next" href="#slides__2" title="Next"></a>
</div>
<div id="slides__2" class="slide">
<span class="slide__text">2</span>
<a class="slide__prev" href="#slides__1" title="Prev"></a>
<a class="slide__next" href="#slides__3" title="Next"></a>
</div>
<div id="slides__3" class="slide">
<span class="slide__text">3</span>
<a class="slide__prev" href="#slides__2" title="Prev"></a>
<a class="slide__next" href="#slides__4" title="Next"></a>
</div>
<div id="slides__4" class="slide">
 <span class="slide__text">4</span>
<a class="slide__prev" href="#slides__3" title="Prev"></a>
<a class="slide__next" href="#slides__1" title="Prev"></a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Note that:

 The one going backwards has the slide__prev class, and the one going forwards has

the slide__next class.

 the href contains the jump link to the slide we want to move to. You have to set these
manually.

Now for the css:

.slide a {
position: absolute;
top: 48%;
width: 35px;
height: 35px;
border: solid black;
border-width: 0 4px 4px 0;
padding: 3px;
box-sizing: border-box;
}

a.slide__prev {
transform: rotate(135deg);
-webkit-transform: rotate(135deg);
left: 5%;
}

a.slide__next{
transform: rotate(-45deg);
-webkit-transform: rotate(-45deg);
right: 5%;
}
You can style and position these buttons however you want - I've chosen to have arrows
pointing in each direction. Sometimes the simple option is the best - but you can make your
own choice!

Step 3 - Removing the scrollbar with CSS

.slider {
width: 600px;
height: 400px;
text-align: center;
border-radius: 20px;
overflow: hidden;
position: relative;
}
... just add overflow: hidden; to .slider. This also bring the border radius into play.

That gives us this:

OK, pretty good - but ideally we don't want the buttons to be locked to each slide. Sliders
typically have buttons fixed in place.

But is that possible with CSS?

Why, yes!

Step 4 - Fixing the navigation buttons in place

We don't need to change the HTML for this, but we do need to update our CSS a bit:

.slide a {
background: none;
border: none;
}

a.slide__prev,
.slider::before {
transform: rotate(135deg);
-webkit-transform: rotate(135deg);
left: 5%;
}

a.slide__next,
.slider::after {
transform: rotate(-45deg);
-webkit-transform: rotate(-45deg);
right: 5%;
}

.slider::before,
.slider::after,
.slide__prev,
.slide__next {
position: absolute;
top: 48%;
width: 35px;
height: 35px;
border: solid black;
border-width: 0 4px 4px 0;
padding: 3px;
box-sizing: border-box;
}

.slider::before,
.slider::after {
content: '';
z-index: 1;
background: none;
pointer-events: none;
}
OK so what's going on here? Well first, we've taken the background and border off of
the a element. This makes our buttons effectively invisible.

Then, we've added before and after pseudo elements to slider. These have the same style that
we previously had on the a elements - the nice simple arrow. And we've positioned
them exactly on top of our now invisible buttons, and set pointer-events to none.

Because they are attached to the slider element and not slide, they will remain fixed in place
as the user scrolls through the slides. But... when the user clicks on one, they
are actually clicking on the invisible button attached to the actual slide.

This gives the illusion of fixed navigation buttons! Nice eh?

It looks like this:

OK, now we've got a pretty good, pure CSS slider!

Aha, I hear you say, but what about breadcrumbs, can we add those too?

Glad you asked - yes we can!

Step 5 - Add breadcrumbs to the slider

To add the breadcrumbs to the slider, we are really using the same techniques we've just been
through - just in a slightly different way.

Each breadcrumb will just be another jump link pointing to the relevant slide, and we'll
position it absolutely in the slider element.

So here's the HTML (put this in slider, below the slides element):

<div class="slider__nav">
<a class="slider__navlink" href="#slides__1"></a>
<a class="slider__navlink" href="#slides__2"></a>
<a class="slider__navlink" href="#slides__3"></a>
<a class="slider__navlink" href="#slides__4"></a>
</div>
See? Same links as we used before. Now to style it:

.slider__nav {
box-sizing: border-box;
position: absolute;
bottom: 5%;
left: 50%;
width: 200px;
margin-left: -100px;
text-align: center;
}

.slider__navlink {
display: inline-block;
height: 15px;
width: 15px;
border-radius: 50%;
background-color: black;
margin: 0 10px 0 10px;
}