5 trendy UI effects
A star cursor with a comet tail, frosted glass panels, scroll-driven animation, smooth page transitions and gradients that actually move, plus the one tip we would give for each.
Every year the web picks up a few new party tricks. Some fade out fast, and some stick around because they make a page feel alive without getting in the way. Here are five effects we keep seeing, and in one case keep shipping. For each one we cover what it is, where it tends to show up, and one practical tip so it stays fast and polite. Yes, the first one is ours. We did warn you it was trendy.
1. A custom cursor with a comet tail
Our Star Cursor swaps the arrow for a white star that drags a glowing comet tail and sheds sparkle dust when you move quickly. It suits dark hero sections and portfolio pages where a little whimsy is welcome. The polite part matters more than the sparkle. It turns on only when the browser reports hover, a fine pointer and no reduced motion preference, so touch screens and motion-sensitive visitors get the normal cursor. The star is aria-hidden and never blocks clicks. Touch support is there if you want it, through a touch prop.
2. Frosted glass panels
Glassmorphism is the frosted look: a semi-transparent panel that blurs whatever sits behind it. You see it on navigation bars, cards and overlays placed over gradients or photos, and Nielsen Norman Group notes it is prominent in Apple and Microsoft design systems. In CSS it comes from backdrop-filter, which MDN lists as Baseline since September 2024. Our tip is about reading, not rendering. Text over a busy background can pass contrast in one spot and fail in another, so add more blur and a slightly more opaque fill, then check contrast against the worst patch.
3. Scroll-driven animations
Things that fade in, slide up or fill a progress bar as you scroll. It is everywhere on landing pages. The newer way to build it is CSS scroll-driven animations, where animation-timeline ties a keyframe animation to scroll position instead of time, so you skip the scroll listeners on the main thread. The catch: MDN still marks animation-timeline as limited availability, so treat it as an enhancement and keep IntersectionObserver as the widely supported fallback. And wrap the movement in a prefers-reduced-motion check, because scroll motion is exactly the kind that can make some people feel sick.
4. Smooth page transitions
The View Transition API lets a page morph from one state to the next, like a thumbnail growing into a full image or a header gliding into place, instead of a hard cut. Same-document transitions through document.startViewTransition became Baseline in October 2025, when Firefox 144 shipped them. Cross-document transitions between separate pages are opt-in on both pages with a small @view-transition rule. Browsers without support simply swap the content, so it degrades nicely. Chrome's docs suggest toning transitions down for reduced motion users rather than assuming they want nothing at all.
5. Gradients that actually move
Slowly shifting gradient backgrounds and glowing borders that rotate around a card are having a moment. For a long time CSS could not animate a gradient smoothly, because the browser had no idea what type a custom property held. The @property rule fixes that by registering a typed custom property, such as an angle or a percentage, which the browser can then interpolate. web.dev covered it reaching every modern browser in July 2024. Keep the motion slow and the area modest, and pause or freeze it under prefers-reduced-motion so the background stays a background.
None of these effects needs to be loud to work. The common thread is restraint: check what the device and the visitor want, and step aside when motion or contrast would get in the way. If you want to start with the fun one, the Star Cursor has a live preview you can play with and a Customize panel for size, tail and colors. It costs $9 on its own, or comes in the $19 Night Sky UI Kit.
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