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Cross Browser CSS Transforms – even in IE

March 9th, 2010 by zoltan · 71 Comments

Update (April 6, 2010):

Please see the follow up article on Cross Browser CSS3 Animation which explores scripting CSS3 properties.

An example of a page using the CSS Transform property and cssSandpaper. Visible in most major browsers, including Internet Explorer. Layout based on work done by Paul Hayes in his article

The CSS transform property allows developers to rotate, scale, and skew blocks of HTML via CSS. Although you can do the same thing with images in Photoshop or The GIMP, using CSS transforms allows developers to do the same thing with any HTML markup and allows users to select the text within the transformed object.

When I first saw sites using transform, I looked at the underlying code and tried to produce pages using transform in all browsers. Although Firefox, Opera and Webkit based browser support it via vendor-specific prefixes (using -moz-transform, -o-transform and -webkit-transform respectively) Internet Explorer doesn’t support it at all. I didn’t like that, so I took out my JavaScript whip, beat Explorer into submission and made it do my bidding (but not without getting a few mental bruises of my own).

Before I start talking about the details of my solution, let’s take a look at a few examples of it in action.  The following code has been tested with Firefox 3.5, Safari 4,  Chrome 4, Internet Explorer 6 and higher.

  1. Rotations Example
  2. Skew Example
  3. Cube Example, using rotates and skews
  4. Another example that looks like a CSS3 version of a Geocities page.

(The examples also work on my copy of Opera 10.5, although I have seen it fail on other installations – I will update this post when I find  out why).

cssSandpaper to the Rescue

I saw the design potential of using CSS transforms and was frustrated at Explorer’s lack of support. I originally tried a non-JavaScript solution which involved creating CSS rules that combine transform with an IE technology that does something similar: the DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix CSS filter.

I then, to steal a phrase from Russel Peters, started to Hurt Real Bad:

  • the syntax of transform is very obvious:
    #myObject {
   transform: rotate(40deg) scale(2.0);
}

    but the IE filter code is quite intimidating:

    #myObject {
   filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix(sizingMethod='auto expand',
        M11=1.5320888862379554, M12=-1.2855752193730787,
        M21=1.2855752193730796, M22=1.5320888862379558);
}

    The scary numbers that the DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix filter uses requires knowledge of matrix and vector mathematics. Even though there is a great Wikipedia article on the subject, even the mathematically gifted wouldn’t want to do the calculations to do a simple rotate in CSS (I would like to note here that even though I have a university degree in Mathematics, I hate doing arithmetic inside my head. If you don’t believe me, watch me figure out a tip at a restaurant sometime. I’m not kidding).

  • although it is possible to have a list of transformations using transform, the DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix filter only allows one transform matrix. In order to implement multiple transforms using one filter, a designer would have to convert all the transforms into matrices and multiply them together. Again, as ugly as I am when I first wake up in the morning.
  • when rotating, skewing, or doing any other transformations on objects using the transform property, the center of the object remains fixed. However, the Matrix filter doesn’t keep the centre of the transformed object fixed, as seen by the illustration below:
    Rotate using CSS transform Rotate using IE Filter

See the above example in action (compare IE with the other browsers to see the difference for yourself)

I was about to give up on my endeavor until I read Weston Ruter’s clever CSS Gradients in Canvas article, which implements gradients in older versions Firefox and Opera. What I really liked was how he used the CSS from a web page to place the canvas gradients in the page (as opposed to using CSS classes to indicate where the gradients should go). I then thought it would be a great idea to do the same with CSS transforms – why not have JavaScript find out which objects are transformed by reading the style sheets containing the transform rules, and if the browser is Internet Explorer, apply the Matrix filter, while translating the image so that the center is maintained. How hard could it be …….. right?

After a few obsessive months of coding, coffee drinking and Asprin popping (as well angrily asking myself on several occasions why the &@$! I would wanted to do this in the first place), I created cssSandpaper.js, a library that implements transform (and some other CSS3 properties) as consistently as possible in all browsers. It uses many ideas from Ruter’s gradient script, as well as sylvester.js, James Coglan’s brilliant matrix and vector math library.

The code is currently in a beta stage, but I think that it’s in good enough shape that developers can start to play around with these really cool effects today and have it work in almost any browser.

Browser Differences

After I finished cssSandpaper and played around with transforms, I found some slight differences in the way browsers handled them:

  • If you transform an object with scrollbars, it is possible to scroll the object in most browsers in most cases. However, in the cube page I mocked up, I noticed the following behaviour:
    • the left facing side of the cube isn’t easily accessible in IE.
    • the scrollbars don’t appear at all in Opera.
    • the scrollbars are not quite clear in Chrome for Windows, although one can still scroll the sides if you can guess where they are.
    • Firefox 3.5 for Mac puts the scrollbars in strange places (this has been fixed 3.6).
  • In Internet Explorer, the text is selectable but sometimes it takes a few tries to figure out how to do it (try selecting text with IE in my cube mockup and you’ll see what I mean).
  • When selecting text within Firefox, the text tends to jump around ever so slightly for some odd reason (this is quite a subtle effect that it is probably not noticeable in most instances).
  • It looks like Internet Explorer takes the block of HTML, converts it to an image and then does the transform (I’m not sure .. I’m guessing). As a result, the text in certain situations will look a little blurry, especially if scaling is involved.

As to be expected, the rendering of the transformed text in the other browsers slightly differs:

Explorer 6.x+ Firefox 3.5+ Safari 4.0+ Chrome 3.0+ Opera 10.0+
Windows
Mac OS X Not Applicable Doesn’t support transforms yet (as of version 10.50)
Linux Not Applicable Not Applicable Doesn’t support transforms yet (as of version 10.50)

Using cssSandpaper

After downloading the archive you must put the following tags into the head of your document after all of your style sheet declarations (this is to ensure the JavaScripts will run after the style sheets are loaded):

<script type="text/javascript" src="path/to/js/cssQuery-p.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="path/to/js/jcoglan.com/sylvester.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="path/to/js/cssSandpaper.js"></script>

You can then use the transform property in your web pages. Note that since the specification for the transform property is finalized by the W3C, I decided to use the vendor-specific prefix -sand- before each CSS3 property it supports.

The following is a description of how to use transform, as well as two other CSS3 properties that cssSandpaper supports, box-shadow and gradient.

Go to the cssSandpaper documentation to download the latest version.

-sand-transform

Description

Transforms allow developers to rotate, scale, and skew blocks of HTML via CSS.

Syntax

#container {
   -sand-transform:  <function-list>;
}

where <function-list> can be a space separated list of the following functions:

Function Purpose
rotate(angle) Rotates HTML elements. angle can be in degrees (e.g. rotate(30deg)) or radians rotate(1.3rad)
scale(sx[, sy]) Scales HTML elements. sx and sy are numbers, where 1 represents the original size, 2 represents twice the size, etc. Note that if sy isn’t specified, it is assumed to be equal to sx. Similar functions are scaleX(sx) and scaleY(sy).
skew(ax[, ay]) Skews the object around the x and y axes by the specified angles in degrees or radians. If ay isn’t provided, it is assumed to be 0deg.
matrix(a, c, b, d, tx, ty) Applies a 2D transformation matrix comprised of the specified six values. If you aren’t familiar with linear algebra and matrix arithmetic, this function will be hard to understand. For further information, you may want to read Wikipedia’s Transformation Matrix article, although if you are mathematically challenged, you may run away from your computer screaming.

If you are familiar with matrix multiplication, note that c and b are reversed. This follows the way Firefox has implemented this method (i believe WebKit based browsers reverse these numbers).

Note: non-Explorer browsers support the translate function as well. I have not been able to find a way to make this work IE at this time, due to a technical issue with the IE’s Matrix filter property (for those who want details, I use sizingMethod='auto expand' when using the Matrix filter which doesn’t support translations, and using sizingMethod=’crop’ is not suitable to emulate the transform property). For this reason, the tx and ty values of the matrix() function are not supported as well.

Examples

-sand-box-shadow

Description

box-shadow allows us to take a block level element and put a shadow underneath. There can optionally set a blur factor to give a warmer effect to the shadow.

Syntax

#container {
   -sand-box-shadow: <horizontal-offset> <vertical-offset> <blur-radius> 
;
}

Note that in IE, the blur-radius is not supported, due to a lack of support in IE’s DropShadow filter.

Examples

-sand-gradient

Description

Gradients are gradual blends of color, and can be linear or radial:

Syntax

#container {
   background-image: -sand-gradient(<type>, <start-point>, <end-point>, <color-stop1>, <color-stop2>, ..., <color-stopN>)
}

The type can be linear and gradient, although Internet Explorer doesn’t support radial gradients at this time, due to limitations in IE’s gradient filter. Internet Explorer also only supports simple linear gradients (i.e. only horizontal and vertical and only two colours).

A more detailed explanation can be found in the section regarding gradients of the W3C’s working draft of CSS Image Values Module Level 3

Examples

Other Known Issues

  • Currently, when a users changes the font-size in IE, the layout gets a little messed up. This will be fixed in a future release.
  • Scripting in IE cannot be done via the usual obj.style.transform. There is, however, an alternative way of scripting the cssSandpaper supported properties which will be outlined in a future blog post (I don’t mean to keep anyone in suspense … it’s just that I feel like I’ve spent too much time on this post and I want to get at least this part out the door :-) ).
  • Opera 10.5 sort of works.  It works on my copy, but not on another copy I’ve seen.  I don’t know why yet, but I will find out soon and post and update when I do.
  • Weston Ruter’s gradient script has more features.  I will incorporate them in a future release.

Future Work

cssSandpaper will eventually be about more than just transforms – I would like to be able to support other advanced CSS topics (maybe even animations, if it is possible). It probably has a few bugs in it – I would really appreciate anyone letting  me know if you find any (my e-mail address is at the top left part of the page).

If anyone would like to get contribute code or do testing, I would love the help too.  :-)

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Weston Ruter for his CSS Gradients in Canvas script, since I stole many of his ideas with his permission (I will be implementing more of the advanced features of his script in a future release of CSS3Sandbox).  I would also like to thank  James Coglan for building  Sylvester so I didn’t have to.

Downloads

Go to the cssSandpaper documentation to download the latest version.

Tags: CSS · CSS3 · JavaScript · , , , , , ,

71 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Weston Ruter // Mar 8, 2010 at 8:53 pm

    Thanks for the kind words and kudos! Great work!

  • 2 zoltan // Mar 9, 2010 at 1:55 am

    @Weston: I don’t think I would have written this if it weren’t for your article. Much appreciated!

  • 3 Levi // Mar 9, 2010 at 3:00 am

    Fantastic work! Can’t wait to try it out! :)

  • 4 Ryan McGrath // Mar 9, 2010 at 3:10 am

    This is one hell of an impressive post. Major kudos to you; if you’re ever in the DC area, hit me up, I owe you a beer.

  • 5 Michel // Mar 9, 2010 at 4:37 am

    Great work!

    I am amazed how things in the HTML/CSS area progress… The cube looks absolutely amazing in my browser (FF 3.6) and works in IE6, indeed! And I can select text and click on links!

    5 years from now, where will be Flash, and various graphics editors (Illustrator, Fireworks, Photoshop)? Will we need them for Web design at all, or shall we use HTML and CSS and JS for everything? Rotate, transform, drop-shadows, gradients, rounded corners… 5 years ago all of this was possible with Fireworks and Photoshop only, and just remember, how complex and difficult was to simply apply some rounded corners to tabs in a navigation block (Sliding Doors anyone?) — you had to have various images, then apply some complex html/css to make this all work!

    But soon, we’ll be able to do it without any image editor, and with as simple as possible code!

    Thanks for the inspiring article and demos! :)

  • 6 Danny // Mar 9, 2010 at 4:53 am

    Fantastic work, this has saved me a lot of time on a project – thank you!

  • 7 kl // Mar 9, 2010 at 5:54 am

    Wow, Opera’s rendering is the best (crisp antialiasing, not blocky, not blurry!)

  • 8 RyanC // Mar 9, 2010 at 6:54 am

    EXCELLENT work, this is really impressive stuff.

    Would it be at all feasible to add support for Firefox 3.0.x? I realize the appropriate CSS3 transforms aren’t available there, but it still has a non-insignificant market share (reportedly 6.5% for Feb2010, per w3schools); is there a way to fake it through SVG/canvas/some other technology?

  • 9 Cross Browser CSS Transforms – even in IE « Netcrema – creme de la social news via digg + delicious + stumpleupon + reddit // Mar 9, 2010 at 8:11 am

    [...] Cross Browser CSS Transforms – even in IEuseragentman.com [...]

  • 10 Cross Browser CSS Transforms – even in IE » Web Design // Mar 9, 2010 at 8:26 am

    [...] Cross Browser CSS Transforms – even in IE [...]

  • 11 Samuli Hakoniemi // Mar 9, 2010 at 8:39 am

    Hi. Great work done!

    I have similar kind of process ongoing and I wrote an article about it couple of months ago “Cross-browser Rotation Transformation with CSS” (http://samuli.hakoniemi.net/cross-browser-rotation-transformation-with-css/)

    I’m currently at stage, where rotation, scaling, opacity (+rgba) and some other issues are solved, and I’m moving towards transitions. The purpose is to publish first version during March and I’ll blog about it.

    Anyway, it’s very nice to see someone else solving the same issue – and with greater progress :)

  • 12 zoltan // Mar 9, 2010 at 11:56 am

    @RyanC: Thanks for the kudos. I wish it could be done with older Firefox but I haven’t seen way to do it with any of the tech you mentioned … :(

  • 13 zoltan // Mar 9, 2010 at 4:29 pm

    @Jacob: That was totally an oversight by me – cheers for letting me know. I’ll have to fix this in the next release very soon. The transform property, however, is queried along with the vendor specific ones.

  • 14 zoltan // Mar 10, 2010 at 2:04 am

    @Samuli: would love to see how you implent your solution. If you ever feel like collaborating, let me know … I’d always be up for it. There is still a bit of work to be done (I’d love to see a feature rich version of border-radius for IE, for example)

  • 15 Rustam, Russia // Mar 10, 2010 at 3:17 am

    Dear Zoltan, thank you for the perfect plug-in!

    Let’s waiting for FF3.0 and Opera 9 to expire.
    Also font-face has similar browser support like css-transform.

    Russian IT-community posted article about your plug-in http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/javascript/86952/
    One question which interests many developers – practical application of css-transform

  • 16 alex // Mar 10, 2010 at 3:43 am

    awesome! especially fantastic selecting text and scrolling )))

    must try it

  • 17 WheretIB // Mar 10, 2010 at 3:43 am

    Scrollbars work in my version of Opera 10.50 Build 3296.

  • 18 ?????-?????????? CSS transform – ???? ? IE : WEB ??? ???????????? // Mar 10, 2010 at 4:05 am

    [...] ? ?? ???? ???? ???????? ????? [...]

  • 19 zoltan // Mar 10, 2010 at 11:03 am

    @Rustam: *very* qood question. Just because a technology exists, doesn’t mean you *should* use it. I remember when blink/marquee tags, animated GIFs, frames, and other such novelties were the big thing back in 1996, and people produced sites like the My The Cheat Web Page!!!!!. Even though The Cheat’s page parodies of what I am talking about, the real deal wasn’t that far off … I want to vomit just thinking about it :-)

    I think @Michel’s well-written comment is right on the money – when used appropriately, transform, along with @font-face, gradient, opacity, box-shadow, text-shadow and the other CSS3 effects, will allow us to have much more flexibility with layout. Even though you can do the same stuff with Photoshop, the fact that you don’t will allow developers to come up with designs more quickly (and will, I believe, create sites that are more searchable). And the fact that CSS3 is scriptable will allow us to not be limited by Flash. This is especially important in our current smart-phone environment where the browsers for the high-end phones (iPhone, Android) don’t support Flash, but do support CSS3 properties like transform (take a look at the cube example in the iPhone or Android browsers if you wan’t proof).

    Even though one cannot access the .style.transform object in IE, cssSandpaper will allow an alternative way to script -sand-transform. This will be presented in a future blog post very soon.

  • 20 Daniel Glazman // Mar 10, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    Very nice article… Thanks for making this possible.

    Daniel Glazman, CSS WG Co-Chair

  • 21 zoltan // Mar 10, 2010 at 2:42 pm

    @Daniel: Wow! Thanks. That is unexpected kudos. Much appreciated. (*^_^*)

  • 22 "Cowboy" Ben Alman // Mar 10, 2010 at 2:49 pm

    Zoltan, have you considered breaking out the CSS stylesheet reading code into a generic lib and building cssSandpaper on top of that? It could be very useful for other custom-CSS-plus-JavaScript solutions.

  • 23 zoltan // Mar 10, 2010 at 2:57 pm

    @Cowboy: I never thought of that. I’ll probably end up doing it … thanks for the great idea.

  • 24 Nic // Mar 10, 2010 at 4:02 pm

    I wrote a dojox extension handling the transform and transform-origin properties, fixing the IE inconsistencies:
    http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dojox/html/tests/test_style-html.html
    http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/demos/css3/demo.html
    Nic

  • 25 zoltan // Mar 10, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    @Nic: That is sweet! I noticed that you have translation there but you are having the same trouble I was having – it is not consistent between IE and the others (I didn’t include it in this release for that reason). This is something I would love to solve and if you ever want to work together on this, I would be totally up for that.

    Nicely done on the transform-origin piece. My script doesn’t support it … yet. ;-)

  • 26 Rob Crowther // Mar 10, 2010 at 6:06 pm

    You may be able to do something in Firefox 3.0 with SVG and foreignObject:

    http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2006/06/the_future_is_now.html

  • 27 zoltan // Mar 10, 2010 at 6:14 pm

    @Rob: I’ve never heard of this before. Thanks for the tip.

  • 28 S.Smith - Real Taiji // Mar 11, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    Hmm… it didn’t work at all in Opera for me, on Vista. But it was excellent on Firefox.

    At first, I thought, I’d like to use it or see it used more often. But on second thought, I’m moving toward more simple designs, removing many bits of graphics.

    It still looks cool though!

  • 29 Tom Something // Mar 11, 2010 at 7:10 pm

    Thanks for this. Though I’m a bit (more) irrated at Microsoft now (than I was five minutes ago). What I’m reading here is “Microsoft built some nifty proprietary filters that can carry out a lot of the transformations and effects proposed by CSS3. Basically, they did most of the work involved in getting this all to work, then stopped just short of making it easy on developers.”

    Grrrrrr.

  • 30 Nicolas Gallagher // Mar 11, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    Nice. What about adding the vendor implemented properties and functions to the CSS so that users with JS disabled can still benefit from the CSS3 implementations that currently exist in modern browsers.

  • 31 zoltan // Mar 12, 2010 at 12:28 am

    @Tom: not that I’m defending anyone here, but IE filters were created during the IE 4.0 days, way before CSS3 transforms were even thought. However, I could see why developers could be annoyed that MS decided to spend time implementing this instead of getting the existing CSS spec right, but that is probably the subject of a different blog post :)

  • 32 Jake Magnusson // Mar 12, 2010 at 11:08 am

    Man those transforms look sweet.

    I first read about transforming in IE though at this page a few months back that also goes through the “scary numbers” :) http://someguynameddylan.com/lab/transform-origin-in-internet-explorer.php, but that code’s not nearly as featured as this.

    Great stuff keep it coming.

  • 33 zoltan // Mar 12, 2010 at 4:15 pm

    @Jake: the article you cite is a great one as it shows the details in the math involved – thanks for sending it.

    I was tempted to include a description of the math in a similar fashion, but a few colleagues of mine persuaded me not to, fearing the average web designer would run away screaming. Since I had the same reaction when confronted with writing such a beast, I (happily) followed their advice. :)

    Besides, the other article does a better job than I would have.

  • 34 pascal // Mar 13, 2010 at 5:25 am

    But why do your properties use a prefix? If my browser already supported the properties, it now doesn’t anymore unless scripting is activated (and being an evil person, I access the web2.0 only without scripts, to bitch about bad web design)

    So I have to use transform AND -sand-transform for it to work nicely in a future browser.
    Is there a technical reason the script didn’t just parse transform too? (The syntax should be the official one anyway, so it shouldn’t make a difference)

  • 35 zoltan // Mar 13, 2010 at 10:59 am

    I was really torn about what to do here. I wanted to just use “transform” and “gradient”, but from what I have seen, these CSS3 properties have not been finalized yet (which is why -moz-transform and -webkit-transform exist. For example, gradient syntax is vastly different between firefox and webkit). I understand your concern, but until they are finalized, I think I will have to continue using the -sand properties (for now).

    Any comments on this strategy are certainly welcome.

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  • 38 Keith Clark // Mar 17, 2010 at 3:49 am

    I was dabbling with this stuff in IE for my ie-css3.js project.

    After several hours of exhaustive experimentation I ended up coming to the same conclusions as you; It’s just not possible to get IE to render transformed objects in a way that matches the W3C spec using just matrix transforms in a stylesheet.

    I beleive you can adjust IE’s rotation point using JavaScript by manually sizing the elements based on the bounding box of its rotated state but I couldn’t find a way to do it from the stylesheet for my project.

    Keith

  • 39 zoltan // Mar 18, 2010 at 3:28 pm

    @Guru: Surprisingly, yes. Filters have been around for a while. It could possibly work with older versions of IE, but I haven’t tested (or care). :-)

  • 40 umesh chand // Mar 21, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    Excellent !

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  • 44 tom // Mar 21, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    thx a lot! this is a great work!

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  • 49 Web Guru // Mar 21, 2010 at 7:38 pm

    Does this work on the old versions of IE, like IE6 ?

  • 50 Guhan Iyer // Mar 21, 2010 at 7:39 pm

    Excellent I have been looking for something like for a recent IT client of mine. Thanks!

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  • 52 ikedo // Mar 25, 2010 at 4:31 am

    Excellent thank for thais post

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  • 54 Naat // Mar 28, 2010 at 4:01 am

    Excellent Work done Thanks…
    It is really very good…
    Thanks Again.

  • 55 Vladislav Vorobiev // Apr 6, 2010 at 3:57 pm

    Thanks for great framework and ideas.

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  • 60 CSS-Design // Apr 29, 2010 at 11:25 am

    Awesome CSS3-Transform Tutorial, thx for sharing!

  • 61 safetycopy // May 27, 2010 at 12:36 pm

    This is great work! :-)

    Unfortunately, I’ve come across a conflict that makes this unsuitable for a project I’m working on.

    I’m using jQuery to dynamically add items to a page and randomly generate the amount of rotation applied to them. Because the random rotation is dynamically generated, I have to attach it to the items as an inline style, and this seems to mess with the way your method works.

    I’ve been trying to come up with a workaround, as I’d love to support rotation in more browsers, but, so far, I’ve come up empty-handed.

    I was wondering if you might have any ideas?

  • 62 zoltan // May 27, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    If I understand the question correctly, there is a workaround for this described in the follow-up article about animationing css transforms. Since manipulating the style object’s transform property won’t work, I exposed a few methods such as cssSandpaper.setTransform() to script the CSS properties.

    Let me know if this does/doesn’t suit your needs … I want to make this library as full-featured and as easy to use as possible.

  • 63 Sagar Ranpise // Jun 21, 2010 at 9:25 am

    Absolutely Awesome Work! Thanks a lot for sharing it!

  • 64 brothercake // Jul 3, 2010 at 2:07 pm

    Reading the CSS and automatically converting it is a nice touch — but — it’s over-engineering IMO. You’d be much better off just working with class names – it exposes the mechanics to other developers in a much more straightforward way, without them having to work through your CSS parsing; and it saves on CSS parsing! and it avoids various context issues such as safetycopy’s

    Also, I’m not sure from reading the post and comments whether this will be useful information, or whether you already know all this stuff, but: here’s how to convert transform-origin into values that IE can use for its matrix (where “x” and “y” are the dimensions of the box, and “a” is the angle of rotation in radians):

    Where origin is “100% 0″ (right top):

    Dx = x – (Math.cos(a) * x)
    Dy = 0 – (Math.sin(a) * x)

    Where origin is “0 100%” (left bottom):

    Dx = Math.sin(a) * y
    Dy = y – (Math.cos(a) * y)

    Where origin is “100% 100%” (right bottom):

    Dx = (x + (Math.sin(a) * y)) – (Math.cos(a) * x)
    Dy = 0 – (((Math.cos(a) * y) + (Math.sin(a) * x)) – y)

    And of course “0 0″ doesn’t need translating.

    HTH :-)

  • 65 brothercake // Jul 3, 2010 at 2:31 pm

    This, btw, is with sizingMethod set to “clip to original”, to match what the other browsers do.

  • 66 zoltan // Jul 3, 2010 at 6:20 pm

    @brothercake: thanks for the transform-origin tip. Regarding the decision to use CSS – my objective was to help developers to get used to the proper CSS syntax now to prepare for that day when all browsers support CSS transforms. I am, however, open to supporting alternative solutions for the sake of optimization. How would your classes solution work?

  • 67 freemh // Jul 25, 2010 at 8:35 am

    Looks great! , expects that it works on internet explore , Here is another example that I found interesting :
    http://depotwebdesigner.com/tutorials/how-to-create-3d-cube-with-css3.html

  • 68 Utiliser CSS3 aujourd’hui : outils et ressources | traffic-internet.net // Jul 27, 2010 at 8:34 am

    [...] CSS Transform sur IE : rotations et déformations sur Internet Explorer [...]

  • 69 Astuce : Utiliser CSS3 aujourd’hui, outils et ressources | traffic-internet.net // Jul 28, 2010 at 7:22 am

    [...] CSS Transform sur IE : rotations et déformations sur Internet Explorer [...]

  • 70 Charlotte Coleman // Aug 4, 2010 at 11:00 am

    Thanks Zoltan, it’s such a relief to find your post. I designed a website without thinking about how I’d implement my swish diagonal navigation!

  • 71 The Trials And Tribulations Of 10KB » Coding » Russell Heimlich // Aug 27, 2010 at 8:57 pm

    [...] the card element. The final touch was to rotate one of the child elements 180 degrees using the transform CSS property so it would display upside down just like a real card. My image-less approach was just a fraction [...]

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