2 Ways to Create News Ticker In HTML CSS (Horizontal & Vertical)

Welcome to a tutorial on how to create a news ticker in HTML and CSS. Need to add a block of scrolling news to a page? Yep, it is possible to do so using pure HTML and CSS, not a single line of Javascript. Read on for the examples!

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Click here to download | Example on CodePen

Just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

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TUTORIAL VIDEO

 

1) HORIZONTAL NEWS TICKER

1A) THE HTML

<div class="hwrap"><div class="hmove">
  <div class="hitem">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.</div>
  <div class="hitem">Aliquam consequat varius consequat.</div>
  <div class="hitem">Fusce dapibus turpis vel nisi malesuada sollicitudin.</div>
  <div class="hitem">Pellentesque auctor molestie orci ut blandit.</div>
</div></div>

As simple as it gets. Create 2 <div> wrappers, and sandwich the items within.

 

1B) THE CSS

/* (A) FORCE ALL ITEMS INTO SINGLE ROW */
.hmove { display: flex; }
.hitem { width: 100%; flex-shrink: 0; }
.hwrap { overflow: hidden; }
 
/* (B) MOVE ITEMS FROM RIGHT TO LEFT */
/* first item = 0, fourth item = -300% */
@keyframes tickerh {
  0% { transform: translatex(100%); }
  100% { transform: translatex(-400%); }
}
.hmove { animation: tickerh linear 20s infinite; }
.hmove:hover { animation-play-state: paused; }

This may seem rather intimidating to beginners, but keep calm and look closely.

• (A) The basic idea is to lay the items in a long horizontal row. We do that by setting the inner wrapper to flex layout, and all slides to 100% width.
• (A) Also hide the overflow on the outer wrapper, so the user won’t see a funky long scrollbar.
• (B) The ticker magic is to set translatex() on the inner wrapper. Long story short:
  • translatex(0) will show the first item, translatex(-100%) for the second, translatex(-200%) for the third, and so on.
  • We create a set of keyframes that will shift from the first item to the last.
  • Attach the keyframes to the inner wrapper, and CSS animation will do the rest of the magic.

 

 

1C) THE DEMO

 

1D) ADD/REMOVE ITEMS

• The HTML is self-explanatory, just set your items in the double <div> wrappers.
• Modify the translatex() for the last item, and adjust the animation duration accordingly.
• Take note, there is a potential problem here.
  • The animation duration controls the “scrolling speed”.
  • But depending on the window width, the scrolling speed will increase/decrease.
  • A simple way to prevent the scrolling speed from going too fast/slow is to set min-width and max-width on the outer wrapper.

 

2) VERTICAL NEWS TICKER

2A) THE HTML

<div class="vwrap"><div class="vmove">
  <div class="vitem">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.</div>
  <div class="vitem">Aliquam consequat varius consequat.</div>
  <div class="vitem">Fusce dapibus turpis vel nisi malesuada sollicitudin.</div>
  <div class="vitem">Pellentesque auctor molestie orci ut blandit.</div>
</div></div>

Look no further, this is the same as the horizontal version.

 

 

2B) THE CSS

/* (A) UNIFORM ROW HEIGHT */
/* make sure enough height space */
.vwrap, .vitem { height: 80px; }
.vwrap { overflow: hidden; }
 
/* (B) CENTER TEXT */
.vitem {
  display: flex;
  text-align: center;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
}
 
/* (C) MOVE ITEMS FROM TOP TO BOTTOM */
/* bottom 0 = first item, bottom 300% = fourth item */
.vmove { position: relative; bottom: 0; }
@keyframes tickerv {
  0% { bottom: -100%; }
  100% { bottom: 400%; }
}
.vmove { animation: tickerv linear 12s infinite; }
.vmove:hover { animation-play-state: paused; }

Slightly different CSS strategy here.

1. First, set the outer wrapper and items to the same height… Hide the funky scrollbar as usual.
2. This is kind of optional, but it just looks better with the text centered.
3. Same old CSS keyframes animation trick. But instead of translatex(), we play with relative position and bottom.

 

2C) THE DEMO

 

 

 

HTML MARQUEE

You may stumble on some tutorials on the Internet that use <marquee> as a solution. Just don’t use those. HTML marquee has already been deprecated and is outdated at the time of writing.

 

INFOGRAPHIC CHEATSHEET

 

COMPATIBILITY CHECKS

• CSS Flex – CanIUse
• CSS Animations – CanIUse
• CSS Transform – CanIUse

The examples in this tutorial should work on all modern browsers.

 

LINKS & REFERENCES

• Responsive Text Slider – Code Boxx
• Scrolling Breaking News Ticker – Bootsnipp