The success of a website's design depends on many factors. But when it comes to user experience, it’s often the details that make a noticeable difference. At first glance, similar websites may only differ slightly, but this can affect their popularity and conversion rates. This is without even considering marketing. Every element of web design influences the final product’s quality (every website created by a professional is a product of their work and creativity), but some features enhance the project much more than others.
Dynamic elements never go unnoticed by visitors and always catch the eye. They affect emotions, improve brand recognition, and make the interface more engaging and appealing. Animation can be obvious, in the background, or triggered only when interacting with elements. Of course, the amount of animation depends on the design concept, but according to current standards and trends, animations are typically used sparingly.
One of the most popular trends among web designers is mouse over effects (hover effects). These are not immediately noticeable, but once you hover the cursor over a menu item, button, or info block, it changes tone, color, shape, or size. This effect is a winning strategy for increasing emotional engagement with a site. Regular readers of our blog will surely remember various examples of websites where mouse over effects are used in different ways.
Today we’ll explore some of the most impressive projects using hover effects and examine how to create them using Photoshop, CSS, and where to find inspiration or ready-to-use code snippets.
Font Smith
This website allows users to choose a font name from a wide array of icon tiles. As you move the cursor, each tile changes color and displays the font itself. It’s especially visually appealing when you move the cursor quickly across multiple tiles, creating a trail of movement.
Pixels by Tomer Lerner
Tomer Lerner created a nearly fully animated website. On the homepage, geometric shapes move under the cursor; transitions between pages are animated, and a rectangle forms around the section title. It's hard to describe the beauty and simplicity of it with words — it's best to see it for yourself.
Trainrobber
This project offers an interactive Wild West–style journey through innovative projects. Visitors can choose a section and explore through fog and animated visuals.
M11
The M11 team, specializing in decorations for events, film, and television, created a website that won several awards. Animation is used subtly: buttons and icons change only when hovered over, and screen transitions are lively but not irritating.
The Selfie Collection
The Selfie Collection is a project with selfie photos and auction items. The design is interesting because each active image reveals a text box with item descriptions and a link to the auction. Colored tiles are a popular element in flat design, and the soft animation of color transitions in these blocks looks natural and familiar.
Joint
The minimalist design features text blocks and an intuitive navigation menu. The site layout is almost entirely the navigation itself. Each category opens additional pages that contain images, videos, posts, etc. Overall, it’s executed in a very original manner.
Principles of Using Mouse Over
Despite the beauty of animation, it's important to remember that hover effects shouldn't be intrusive or annoying. They are typically used to highlight important elements ("Click now", "This is interesting") or provide feedback when hovering — in logical places where users expect such interactions: menus, links, or category blocks.
Moreover, the effect should only activate when the mouse is hovering — not before or after. If users are interested in animated menus, they’ll interact with icons on their own — you shouldn’t force them.
Implementing Mouse Over
The mouse over effect in web design is typically implemented in four different ways:
Interestingly, webmasters can take advantage of various resources that provide animation examples along with matching CSS code. This greatly simplifies and speeds up the workflow. You just need to replace the images, and voilà — the effect is ready and the client is impressed.
iHover
A project with a huge number of animation examples written in CSS3. Simply hover over a circle and the animation plays. Below, you'll find a list of code samples arranged in columns and rows (left to right). Find the effect you need and read the corresponding code below. The animations are truly beautiful.
CSS3 Hover Effects
Another resource with animation examples and code. The CSS can be found via the “VIEW TUTORIAL” link and includes titles like “1 EXAMPLE”, “2 EXAMPLE”, and so on.
Animated SVG Icons
Icons can also be animated when clicked. Examples of this kind of animation are presented on the site linked above.
3D Thumbnail Hover Effects
Why not make hover animation 3D? It’s entirely possible and not too complicated. The link above shows examples, and the source code can be accessed through the top menu link “BACK TO THE CODROPS ARTICLE.”
Hover.css
A vast collection of 2D animation effects like background transitions, borders, glows, tooltips, folded corners, and much more. All properties are contained in a single hover.css file provided by the creators. Just download it, and the web designer only needs to choose and apply the desired styles. More details are in the Tutorial, which also covers CSS basics.
Using Photoshop
Even though there are countless mouse over effects, it's entirely possible to create your own animations in web design using Photoshop. We're not talking about the animation timeline we used when working with typography. All you need are plugins and CSS export tools to generate the necessary images.
For example, we created two simple buttons — one with a slightly raised look, and another sunken in, as if it had been clicked. Of course, the visual styling can vary, but we used bold contrast for clarity.
Step 1
Create buttons, add text, apply styles and colors. We won't go into detailed instructions here.
Step 2
Group all layers, select both buttons, and use Image → Crop to isolate the working area without background.
Step 3
Save the result as a PNG-8 file, e.g. web_button2.png.
Step 4
In the same folder, create an HTML file, e.g. web_button2.html using Notepad. Then write a simple HTML block specifying the width and height matching the button image, and set the background to your PNG file.
Step 5
In the CSS section, define hover and focus actions using the properties a:hover and a:focus. Use the same image file but vertically shifted 50px. When the mouse hovers over the link, the lower half of the image will appear — creating the effect of a pressed button.
And just like that, using Photoshop and CSS/HTML, we created a simple animated button. Of course, if your animation is more complex or involves image transitions or color shifts, the code will be different. That’s why we listed helpful resources above for finding effects and sample code.
A key difference is that you don’t need to use pre-made PNGs. Instead, CSS can define the visual style, making it work with any image — with the help of plugins like CSS Hat.
On the other hand, if you're making animated menu icons, images might be more practical since each icon represents a distinct idea.
In Summary
Whether you're building an online store, blog, service site, or landing page, mouse hover effects can add elegance, uniqueness, and user engagement. These effects grow more popular every year, though they come with rules and nuances. Despite the dominance of flat design, subtle animations can refresh a project. Just don’t overuse them.
Animated icons, image transitions, appearing captions, color changes on buttons, or text blocks next to images — all fall under mouse over effects. And using CSS (instead of jQuery) is easier, loads faster, and the language is simpler, modular, and full of ready-to-use properties.
Web design is truly an art form — as if an artist paints a new canvas. Regardless of project type, even the smallest detail can elevate the entire experience.