Animated Tabs

Tabs are a common UI element used to display different sections of content one at a time — either by conditionally rendering them or by navigating between separate pages. Adding a bit of animation can make interactions feel more responsive and intentional, and the overall UI more refined.

For these tabs, I added a sliding underline for the active tab and a subtle hover effect that follows the cursor to make the tabs feel more interactive. It’s all kept simple: just CSS and about 30 lines of vanilla JavaScript. By relying on GPU-accelerated properties like transform and opacity, the animations stay smooth and responsive.

See the full code here.