Use the clip-path attribute of CSS to crop elements into custom shapes such as triangles, circular notches, polygons, etc. without relying on images or SVGs. Its advantages include: 1. Supports a variety of basic shapes such as circle, ellipse, polygon, etc.; 2. Responsive adjustment and adaptable to mobile terminals; 3. Easy to animation, and can be combined with hover or JavaScript to achieve dynamic effects; 4. It does not affect the layout flow, and only crops the display area. Common usages are such as circular clip-path: circle(50px at center) and triangle clip-path: polygon(50% 0%, 100% 100%, 0% 100%). Notes include: good compatibility but does not support old IE; complex shapes may affect performance; clip-path takes effect after transform and will not change with rotation and scaling. By dynamically modifying the clip-path value, interactive effects such as button expansion and card deformation can also be achieved.

To put it directly, the key point: Using the clip-path attribute of CSS, you can easily crop various custom shapes for elements, such as triangles, polygons, circular notches, etc., without relying on pictures or SVGs.

Why choose clip-path?

In web design, sometimes we need to make the image or background appear non-rectangular shapes. The common method used in the past was to use PNG images or SVG masks, but these methods are not flexible enough and are not easy to maintain. And clip-path provides a pure CSS solution, which:

• Supports multiple basic shapes (circle, ellipse, polygon, etc.)
• Can be responsively adjusted
• Easy to animate (although not all browsers support transitions)
• It does not affect the layout flow, it is just the "cropped" display part

How to write common shapes?

Circles and ellipses

 clip-path: circle(50px at center);
clip-path: ellipse(50px 30px at 20% 30%);

This type is suitable for making avatars, small icons, and other places where circular cropping is required. The parameters are the radius and the center point position respectively.

polygon polygon()

This is the most flexible and commonly used type, and can create various complex shapes such as triangles, trapezoids, and stars.

 clip-path: polygon(50% 0%, 100% 100%, 0% 100%);

The above example will cut a rectangle into a triangle. The coordinates in brackets represent the positions of each vertex, and are connected in order to form a graph.

Tips: If you are not sure how to write coordinates, you can use some online tools to assist in the generation, such as Clippy .

A few notes in practical applications

• Compatibility : Mainstream browsers basically support it, but it is not compatible with the old version of IE. If the project needs to support IE, it is recommended to provide an alternative solution.
• Responsive processing : Using percentage units allows the cropping area to change with the container, suitable for mobile terminals.
• Performance Impact : Complex polygons may affect rendering performance, especially when testing with animations.
• Relationship with transform : clip-path takes effect after element transformation, so if you use rotation, scaling and other effects, the crop area will not change as well.

How to create interesting interaction effects?

You can combine hover or JavaScript to dynamically change clip-path to achieve animation effects such as expansion and deformation.

For example, the effect of gradually displaying all content after hovering a button:

 .button {
  clip-path: polygon(0 0, 100% 0, 100% 30%, 0 30%);
  transition: clip-path 0.3s ease;
}

.button:hover {
  clip-path: polygon(0 0, 100% 0, 100% 100%, 0 100%);
}

This will enable the visual effect of slowly "expanding" from a small strip, which is suitable for scenes such as cards, navigation menus, etc.

Basically that's it. Master the writing of several common shapes and add a little imagination, and you can use clip-path to create many interesting page effects.

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