Nifty Modal Window Effects

Today we want to share some ideas for modal window effects with you. There are infinite possibilities for transitioning the appearance of a dialog box and we wanted to provide some ideas of how to show dialog boxes and provide some inspiration.

The idea is to have a trigger button (or any element) which will make a modal window appear on click using a simple transition (or animation).

There are some knows issue with using visibility/opacity for iOS < 6 Mobile Safari, so this probably won't work on older devices.

The structure of the modal window consists of a main wrapper and a content division:

<div class="md-modal md-effect-1" id="modal-1">
	<div class="md-content">
		<h3>Modal Dialog</h3>
		<div>
			<p>This is a modal window. You can do the following things with it:</p>
			<ul>
				<li><strong>Read:</strong> Modal windows will probably tell you something important so don't forget to read what it says.</li>
				<li><strong>Look:</strong> modal windows enjoy a certain kind of attention; just look at it and appreciate its presence.</li>
				<li><strong>Close:</strong> click on the button below to close the modal.</li>
			</ul>
			<button class="md-close">Close me!</button>
		</div>
	</div>
</div>

...

<div class="md-overlay"></div>

The main wrapper is used as a container that will simply be shown or hidden (with visibility, using the class “md-show”) and the inner content will have the transition. The overlay is placed after the modal(s), so we can control the appearance using the adjacent sibling selector:

.md-modal {
	position: fixed;
	top: 50%;
	left: 50%;
	width: 50%;
	max-width: 630px;
	min-width: 320px;
	height: auto;
	z-index: 2000;
	visibility: hidden;
	backface-visibility: hidden;
	transform: translateX(-50%) translateY(-50%);
}

.md-show {
	visibility: visible;
}

.md-overlay {
	position: fixed;
	width: 100%;
	height: 100%;
	visibility: hidden;
	top: 0;
	left: 0;
	z-index: 1000;
	opacity: 0;
	background: rgba(143,27,15,0.8);
	transition: all 0.3s;
}

.md-show ~ .md-overlay {
	opacity: 1;
	visibility: visible;
}

For some effects we will also add a class to the html element. We want this for creating some 3D effects on the body and the content. Note that we are assuming that all the content of the page (except the modal and the overlay) are wrapped in a container:

.md-perspective,
.md-perspective body {
	height: 100%;
	overflow: hidden;
}

.md-perspective body  {
	background: #222;
	perspective: 600px;
}

.container {
	background: #e74c3c;
	min-height: 100%;
}

To be able to control each effect, we use an additional effect class to define what kind of transition we want for that specific modal window. An example for an individual effect is the following:

/* Effect 5: newspaper */
.md-show.md-effect-5 ~ .md-overlay {
	background: rgba(0,127,108,0.8);
}

.md-effect-5 .md-content {
	transform: scale(0) rotate(720deg);
	opacity: 0;
	transition: all 0.5s;
}

.md-show.md-effect-5 .md-content {
	transform: scale(1) rotate(0deg);
	opacity: 1;
}

The trigger buttons will have a data-attribute that holds the reference to the modal box that we want to show:

<button class="md-trigger" data-modal="modal-5">Newspaper</button>

For the special perspective cases, we’ll also add the class “md-setperspective” to the trigger button.

With JavaScript we’ll simple add the class “md-show” to the respective modal when we click on a button, and, if indicated, the “md-perspective” class to the html element.

To experiment with new effects, add a new button and a new modal with an effect class and an ID, referencing to that ID in the button’s data-attribute “data-modal”. Then you can add another set of styles for that specific effect.

If you only want the effect/transition to happen when the modal window appears, but not when it disappears, just add the transition to the “.md-show.md-effect-x .md-content” declaration (like we did for some of the examples).

For the background blur effect we are using Polyfilter by Christian Schaefer to support older browsers.

I hope you enjoyed these little effect ideas and find them inspiring!