Drop Cap
Inactive tabs are mono single-letter initials. The active tab unfolds into a rotating-and-scaling serif drop cap followed by the rest of the word; tail unfolds left-to-right.
Drop Cap the 19th of 32 designs in the 32 CSS Tab 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
<div class="tt07">
<nav class="tt07n">
<input type="radio" name="tt07" id="tt07-r1" checked />
<label class="tt07b" for="tt07-r1">
<span class="tt07cap">A</span>
<span class="tt07rest">rticle</span>
</label>
<input type="radio" name="tt07" id="tt07-r2" />
<label class="tt07b" for="tt07-r2">
<span class="tt07cap">G</span>
<span class="tt07rest">allery</span>
</label>
<input type="radio" name="tt07" id="tt07-r3" />
<label class="tt07b" for="tt07-r3">
<span class="tt07cap">N</span>
<span class="tt07rest">otes</span>
</label>
</nav>
<div class="tt07p">The body copy of an editorial feature.</div>
<div class="tt07p">A curated set of plates and engravings.</div>
<div class="tt07p">Marginalia and footnote annotations.</div>
</div> .tt07 {
background: #e8dec8;
padding: 22px 22px 18px;
width: 100%;
}
.tt07n {
display: flex;
gap: 22px;
align-items: baseline;
border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(12, 85, 96, 0.22);
padding-bottom: 14px;
}
.tt07n input {
position: absolute;
opacity: 0;
pointer-events: none;
}
.tt07b {
border: 0;
background: transparent;
padding: 0;
cursor: pointer;
display: inline-flex;
align-items: baseline;
color: #0c5560;
transition: opacity 0.3s;
}
.tt07cap {
font:
900 26px/1 ui-serif,
Georgia,
serif;
color: #0c5560;
display: inline-block;
transform-origin: center bottom;
transition:
color 0.35s,
transform 0.5s cubic-bezier(0.34, 1.56, 0.64, 1);
}
.tt07rest {
font:
italic 16px/1 ui-serif,
Georgia,
serif;
color: #0c5560;
margin-left: 1px;
max-width: 0;
overflow: hidden;
white-space: nowrap;
transition: max-width 0.5s cubic-bezier(0.65, 0, 0.35, 1) 0.1s;
opacity: 0.7;
}
.tt07b {
opacity: 0.4;
}
.tt07b:hover {
opacity: 0.78;
}
.tt07n input:checked + .tt07b {
opacity: 1;
}
.tt07n input:checked + .tt07b .tt07cap {
color: #d44a2a;
transform: rotate(-4deg) scale(1.15);
}
.tt07n input:checked + .tt07b .tt07rest {
max-width: 200px;
}
.tt07p {
display: none;
padding-top: 14px;
font:
italic 12px/1.6 ui-serif,
Georgia,
serif;
color: #3a3a42;
}
.tt07:has(#tt07-r1:checked) .tt07p:nth-of-type(1),
.tt07:has(#tt07-r2:checked) .tt07p:nth-of-type(2),
.tt07:has(#tt07-r3:checked) .tt07p:nth-of-type(3) {
display: block;
}