Show HN: I saw this cool navigation reveal, so I made a simple HTML+CSS version

[momciloo]

Two clip-paths, over the navigation:

- The first clip-path is a circle (top-left corner) - The second clip-path is a polygon, that acts like a ray (hardcoded, can be improved)

The original work by Iventions Events https://iventions.com/ uses JavaScript, but I found CSS-only approach more fun

Here's a demo and the codebase: https://github.com/Momciloo/fun-with-clip-path

[tgv]

Wrt to the remarks about this being bad design: not everything is meant for (immediate) usability. Sometimes, a web page functions or doubles as marketing material.

And there's more than "minimal number of interactions" functionality. People generally like good looking stuff. While it may be superfluous, it may feel more pleasing than yet another dark gray text on a light grey square. It may even help remembering navigation, since it's easier to remember deviating design.

[flaburgan]

It looks cool, but to have to navigate from one side of the screen to the opposite one is quite suboptimal

[mym1990]

You don't have to optimize the fun out of every single thing in life.

[self_awareness]

The problem is when the engineer's fun starts being user's daily life. Then it's not fun anymore.

[jotaen]

This is the portfolio website of an event agency, not the Gmail website.

[self_awareness]

Fortunately.

[savolai]

On mobile, (my) thumbs are already at the locations where iventions places the toggle and the menu.

[swyx]

one thing i dislike about "good design" in general is that it usually takes away from information density and practical convenience in order to achieve "good design". this feels like a bad tradeoff. i wish that designers cared about making things more accessible and delightful rather than impressing fellow designers.

[falloutx]

Its not about information but about directing the user in this case. Not everything has to be information dense or even convenient. Sometimes you want users to scroll or make them click step buttons. (checkout is sometimes made to have more steps to give users time to adjust to pain of paying)

[division_by_0]

Agree. Info-dense designs are also more difficult to implement and many designers lack experience in this area. E.g., creating a coherent design system that uses borders instead of excessive padding to separate elements is much more difficult than it may seem.

[orphea]

Agree. I opened this iventions website, hated every second being there, closed it.

[vrighter]

which in itself makes it a bad design in the first place. Because first and foremost it has to be functional.

[AlexAplin]

I'm pretty forgiving about accessibility (I'm able to say this at all because I don't have to rely rigidly on accessibility tools) but nav menus feel like a baseline we shouldn't muck with. Tabbing doesn't seem to respond very well in the live example, and at least in the limited demo you can't expand the listing without using a mouse (I thought it would respond to a space with the :checked pseudo, but seems not).

[todotask2]

You made me recalled we made something similar with growing circular on mobile menu the last decade. It was cool for our marketing event website.

[deterministic]

I am not a big fan of that kind of UI. You have to move your mouse all the way top left and then all the way bottom right. It's the worst possible distance-to-move you can come up with. Always always minimize distance-to-move with it comes to designing good UI's.

[self_awareness]

As expected, this doesn't work with non-standard browser window sizes and is butchered on mobile in horizontal mode.

But since the original implementation is also broken, I guess that's OK?

We really have a low bar for quality these days. I hope this won't be used anywhere that's relevant.

[bmacho]

Is there a demo? The link points to a github repo, and github pages is not active

[momciloo]

good point. added the demo link

[xtiansimon]

The _inspiration_ site loaded slowly on my Dino laptop, but the _demo_ was super fast. Good job.

[thekevan]

I saw this on Twitter about an hour ago and was going build one as well. Nice work!

[MagicMoonlight]

That looks really cool. No idea what to use it in, but it’s great.

[xtiansimon]

I like the demo. It's bold, creative, and dynamic. Will there be more explorations? Maybe a writeup on the design to code process?

[rhplus]

Flashback to the days of Macromedia Flash.

[felineflock]

Good job! Looks amazing! It is a great way to call attention to content.

[djfobbz]

This is not mobile friendly. Was that intentional?

[ddtaylor]

Site is death hugged? Anyone have a working link?

[devluc]

Cool effect. Starred

[pmkary]

This is just awesome!

[jackomelon]

Very neat.

[elian55]

Hola

[drakeswalla]

looks really cool

[Gabrys1]

calc(1.42 * 100vmax)

is the same as

142vmax

Just saying :-)

[uxcolumbo]

Neat experiment, but this is not good design.

Design is about solving problems.

A menu is suppose to help you to quickly find and get to a specific section of your site.

Why do I have to click on a thing to reveal the menu even though on my laptop there is enough space to show it all? And then I have to move my mouse all to the other side of the screen?

Who is this for?

Nothing wrong with experimenting with CSS, but avoid ‘dribbblizing’ your designs if you intend to ship it to users who use your site for information or to get a job done.

Edit: commenting more on the iventions.com website where this effect is in use.

[hippo22]

“I have a cool idea in my head that I’d like to show other people” is a problem that some people need to solve.

[mym1990]

Iventions site is clearly a showcase and uses maximalism, which is most definitely a design philosophy. Design may about solving problems, but the fact that you feel entitled to think that you know the problem that Iventions is trying to solve, and also that they are doing it wrong is very presumptuous.

[uxcolumbo]

Not presumptuous. All based on doing enough usability testing to understand that time and time again people get confused if you try to reinvent the wheel or trying to be fancy when it comes to navigating around your site. Stick to best practices.

That's all.

[peckemys]

> Who is this for ?

This effect imitates a spotlight, which is cited on the page and quite relevant for a company in the arts domain

[uxcolumbo]

I tried to use it yesterday on my iPad. Some kind of element was blocking the menu.

Tried it today on my PC (big screen) - the intro animation is slow - 6-10 FPS and clicking on the menu item to reveal the items is slow as well. I could hear my fan spinning up.

Not everyone uses the latest greatest Mx chipset.

This tells me they haven't done any testing. Basically 'this looks cool' and 'works on my machine'.