Horizontal Sticky Stack
Built with CSS Animations
A scroll-driven layout where cards pin in place and stack horizontally as the user scrolls down. This pattern creates a sense of depth and sequence, commonly used for feature showcases and product walkthroughs.
What makes this tutorial special: everything is pure CSS using animation-* — no JavaScript at all. Note that scroll-driven animations are not supported on Firefox at the time of this writing.
Step 1: The first stack
My approach for complex layouts always starts with the static layout and a proper box model first.
Step 2: Static, responsive layout
Then proceed with the complete layout for both desktop and mobile. No need to put 100% effort into this step — it’s just a prep so we have in mind how the mobile layout will look.
At this step, since we are aware that there’s animation to apply, be a bit more generous with HTML elements — allow more wrappers, each handling a specific purpose. One wrapper for
sticky, one for sizing withwidthandheight, one fortransform. This helps avoid CSS conflicts in the animation steps.
Step 3: Sticky
Here comes the fun part. Implement the animation once the static layout is ready.
