scss-mixins-spinners

Performant CSS+HTML spinners implemented as SCSS mixins. See here for examples.

Motivation

I wanted a choice of a few spinners to use on websites, spinners that use only transform and opacity animations so the browser needs to only perform compositing to update the page.

I also wanted to be able to use the spinners with and without a JavaScript front-end framework. As a result, these spinners require the HTML markup for them to exist via some other means, rather than this package creating the markup itself.

Installation

Yarn:

yarn add scss-mixins-spinners

Npm:

npm install scss-mixins-spinners

Usage

The spinner mixins are in individual files in the scss-mixins-spinners/scss directory in this package. In your scss file, import the mixin file for the spinner you want to create an instance of:

// either like this...
@import "scss-mixins-spinners/scss/segmented-spinner.scss";
// ...or you might need to use an initial tilde:
@import "~scss-mixins-spinners/scss/segmented-spinner.scss";

Now you can make use of the imported mixin to create a spinner that is styled appropriately:

#my-spinner {
  @include segmented-spinner($color: green, $segments: 16);
}

You also need to create the appropriate HTML markup for the spinner. As the above spinner is specified to have 16 segments, the markup should look like the following:

<div id="my-spinner">
  <!-- 16 span elements in the containing div: -->
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
</div>

Note that the spinners are styled to be centred within the containing element (div#my-spinner in this case).

Available Spinners

Boxes Spinner

Import

@import "scss-mixins-spinners/scss/boxes-spinner.scss";

Parameters

.some-spinner {
  @include boxes-spinner(
    $time: 1.5s,
    $animation-name: "boxes-spinner-animation"
  );
}

• $time Optional. The overall time for a single animation sequence, in seconds or milliseconds. Defaults to 1.5s.

• $animation-name Optional. The name of the keyframes animation for this spinner instance. If you create multiple types of spinner, you will need to give them different animation names. Defaults to 'boxes-spinner-animation'.

Control the color and size of the spinner by setting the color, width and height of the containing element.

Required HTML Markup

Nine span elements contained in a div:

<div class="some-spinner">
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
</div>

Segmented Spinner

Import

@import "scss-mixins-spinners/scss/segmented-spinner.scss";

Parameters

.some-spinner {
  @include segmented-spinner(
    $color: red,
    $diameter: 50px,
    $segments: 16,
    $segmentWidth: 4px,
    $segmentHeight: 12px,
    $rounded: true,
    $time: 0.8s,
    $animation-name: "segmented-spinner-animation",
    $min-opacity: 0.1,
    $max-opacity: 1
  );
}

• $color Required. The color of the boxes.

• $diameter Optional. The overall diameter of the spinner in pixels. Defaults to 50px.

• $segments Optional. The number of segments in the spinner. Defaults to 16.

• $segmentWidth Optional. The width of each segment in pixels. Defaults to 4px.

• $segmentHeight Optional. The height of each segment in pixels. Defaults to 12px.

• $rounded Optional. Whether the segments have rounded corners or not. Defaults to true.

• $time Optional. The overall time for a single animation sequence, in seconds or milliseconds. Defaults to .8s.

• $animation-name Optional. The name of the keyframes animation for this spinner instance. If you create multiple types of spinner, you will need to give them different animation names. Defaults to 'segmented-spinner-animation'.

• $min-opacity Optional. The minimum opacity level for each segment during animation. Defaults to 0.1.

• $max-opacity Optional. The maximum opacity level for each segment during animation. Defaults to 1.

Required HTML Markup

A div containing a span element for each segment. Thus a spinner with 16 segments requires 16 span elements:

<div class="some-spinner">
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
</div>

Examples

See here for examples of the available spinners.

Issues

CSS Modules

If you use these spinners with CSS Modules, you will currently need to duplicate the animation-name in your SCSS:

#my-spinner {
  @include boxes-spinner(
    $color: $dark-highlight-color,
    $animation-name: "boxes-spinner-animation"
  );

  & span {
    animation-name: boxes-spinner-animation;
  }
}

This deals with an issue where local: gets prefixed to the animation name in the mixin functions.

Credits

The boxes spinner is one of the spinners in spinkit.

License

This package is licensed under the MIT License.