20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs
Marker Highlighter
A pale highlight expands from 0% to 100% width behind the text on hover, with a hand-drawn-look SVG fill. Reads as a real marker pen, not a geometric block.
Marker Highlighter the 11th of 20 designs in the 20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs collection. The design is implemented in pure CSS — no JavaScript required. Copy the HTML and CSS panels below into your project. Because the demo is pure CSS, it works in any framework or templating engine you happen to use. The design honours prefers-reduced-motion and uses real semantic markup, so it ships accessibility-ready out of the box.
Live preview
The code
<p class="cle-marker-wrap">Try our <a href="#" class="cle-marker">brand new editor</a> today.</p>
.cle-marker-wrap {
margin: 0;
font:
500 16px/1.5 system-ui,
sans-serif;
color: #d8d6f0;
}
.cle-marker {
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
padding: 1px 4px;
color: #fff;
font-weight: 600;
text-decoration: none;
z-index: 0;
}
.cle-marker::before {
content: "";
position: absolute;
inset: 0;
background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 100 28' preserveAspectRatio='none'><path d='M2 14 Q 12 6 25 11 T 50 12 T 75 14 T 98 13 L 98 22 Q 80 26 60 23 T 30 22 T 5 22 Z' fill='%23ffd479' opacity='0.55'/></svg>");
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-size: 0% 100%;
background-position: left center;
transition: background-size 0.5s cubic-bezier(0.65, 0, 0.35, 1);
z-index: -1;
}
.cle-marker:hover::before,
.cle-marker:focus-visible::before {
background-size: 100% 100%;
}