Loading Animation with pure CSS

This article introduces a method to create a simple loading animation with PURE CSS, as demonstrated below (powered by codepen.io):

HTML

This implementation needs only one line of HTML code, like what's below:

<div class="loading">Loading</div> 

CSS

Then we move on to the major part, the CSS code.

Because we have only one related html element, we use a :before or :after selector to implement the spinning circle. Setting its content, width, height, etc. to let it show up.

.loading, .loading:before { position: fixed; top: 50%; left: 50%; width: 16rem; height: 16rem; } .loading:before { content: ""; border-radius: 50%; border: 1rem solid; border-color: black transparent; } 

Then we will have two none-spinning quarter-circles, which is due to the border-color: black transparent; setting top/bottom's color to black, and left/right's color to transparent.

Note that position: fixed aligns the top-left corner to the 50%/50% position. so to align the center point to the center view point, we do the following modification to the css

.loading, .loading:before { margin: -5rem; } .loading { padding: 4.7rem 1rem; font-size: 2rem; text-align: center; } 

Then we shall define the spinning animation, using CSS @keyframes to implement.

.loading:before { animation: loading 1.5s linear infinite; } @keyframes loading { from { transform: rotate(0deg); } to { transform: rotate(360deg); } } 

You can also define the animation with keywords like 0% {...} 100% {...}.

Finally, a bit beautifying work and variable-replacement for future modification.