Replacing homepage demo media with looping HTML and CSS

The page presents “CSS feature clips” as a lightweight way to show a product feature on a marketing site: a roughly 10-second looping animation built from HTML and CSS keyframes, rather than video, GIF, or JavaScript. Because the interface is markup, the clip can stay sharp at different sizes, adapt to light and dark themes, load before JavaScript, and be updated without re-recording. Three sample clips illustrate settings changes, analytics values, and a chart animation; together, they use one 3.3 KB gzipped stylesheet. The approach is framework-agnostic, requiring only template-syntax changes to use in React, Vue, Svelte, Astro, Rails, or Dioxus.

A supplied prompt guides a coding agent to create a clip from the product’s real interface, using exact labels and outputs rather than inventing features. It recommends structuring the story in three or four beats, scaling elements with em units, reusing timing classes, and switching changing text instantly to avoid visual smearing. It also calls for a separately animated cursor, reduced-motion support, and accessible role and label attributes. Before publishing, developers should inspect screenshots at each beat, verify cursor placement and layout at 390 pixels wide, test both themes, and check the reduced-motion view. The page distinguishes clips, which explain one idea through a simplified mock, from Stepshots’ clickable recordings, which show real screens, support self-paced exploration, and track viewer behavior.