Demystify CSS Forms with our insightful guide and practical examples. Elevate your web design skills to create stylish and user-friendly forms effortlessly.
The look of an HTML form can be greatly improved with CSS:
Use the width
property to determine the width of the input field:
input {
width: 100%;
}
The example above applies to all <input> elements. If you only want to style a specific input type, you can use attribute selectors:
input[type=text]
- will only select text fieldsinput[type=password]
- will only select password fieldsinput[type=number]
- will only select number fieldsUse the padding
property to add space inside the text field.
Tip: When you have many inputs after each other, you might also want to add some margin
, to add more space outside of them:
input[type=text] {
width: 100%;
padding: 12px 20px;
margin: 8px 0;
box-sizing: border-box;
}
Note that we have set the box-sizing
property to border-box
. This makes sure that the padding and eventually borders are included in the total width and height of the elements.
Use the border
property to change the border size and color, and use the border-radius
property to add rounded corners:
input[type=text] {
border: 2px solid red;
border-radius: 4px;
}
If you only want a bottom border, use the border-bottom
property:
input[type=text] {
border: none;
border-bottom: 2px solid red;
}
Use the background-color
property to add a background color to the input, and the color
property to change the text color:
input[type=text] {
background-color: #3CBC8D;
color: white;
}
By default, some browsers will add a blue outline around the input when it gets focus (clicked on). You can remove this behavior by adding outline: none;
to the input.
Use the :focus
selector to do something with the input field when it gets focus:
input[type=text]:focus {
background-color: lightblue;
}
input[type=text]:focus {
border: 3px solid #555;
}
If you want an icon inside the input, use the background-image
property and position it with the background-position
property. Also notice that we add a large left padding to reserve the space of the icon:
input[type=text] {
background-color: white;
background-image: url('searchicon.png');
background-position: 10px 10px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
padding-left: 40px;
}
In this example we use the CSS transition
property to animate the width of the search input when it gets focus.
input[type=text] {
transition: width 0.4s ease-in-out;
}
input[type=text]:focus {
width: 100%;
}
Tip: Use the resize
property to prevent textareas from being resized (disable the "grabber" in the bottom right corner):
textarea {
width: 100%;
height: 150px;
padding: 12px 20px;
box-sizing: border-box;
border: 2px solid #ccc;
border-radius: 4px;
background-color: #f8f8f8;
resize: none;
}
select {
width: 100%;
padding: 16px 20px;
border: none;
border-radius: 4px;
background-color: #f1f1f1;
}
input[type=button], input[type=submit], input[type=reset] {
background-color: #04AA6D;
border: none;
color: white;
padding: 16px 32px;
text-decoration: none;
margin: 4px 2px;
cursor: pointer;
}
/* Tip: use width: 100% for full-width buttons */
#css