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Parallax Card

Micro-interaction Vanilla JS · zero dependencies Kit: Cinematic Dark — soon
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Holographic

Move your cursor across the card. Each element floats at its own depth.

-- fps
prefers-reduced-motion detected — card stays flat

X-ray · layers

card rotates toward cursor
inner elements float apart
light sweeps the surface

Parameters

Max tilt12°
Depth20 px
Gloss intensity0.25
Follow speed0.12
your version · updates as you tinker

How this effect works

The tilt is two rotations driven by one cursor position. The cursor's offset from the card's center — normalized to -1…1 — becomes degrees: horizontal offset rotates the card around its vertical axis, vertical offset around the horizontal one. Add CSS perspective on the parent and the browser does all the 3D math for you.

The depth layers are the illusion's secret: the icon, title and text each slide a few pixels in the direction of the tilt, each by a different multiplier. Elements moving at different rates read as different distances — that's parallax, the same trick your eyes use. The gloss is a radial highlight that moves opposite the tilt, exactly where a light source would reflect on a glass surface.

Production notes: respects prefers-reduced-motion (card stays flat) · one transform per element per frame — negligible · classic use: product cards, game/NFT cards, feature tiles · on touch screens the card simply stays still · the copied snippet is self-contained HTML + CSS + JS.