19 Visual Effects That Entertain And Amuse

Want to turn your first time readers into long term visitors? Sometimes, it isn’t about the golden content you provide or the glorious insight you offer – sometimes it’s all about how much fun your readers have on your website.

This post is all about using visual effects on your blog and website effectively, creatively, and wisely.
Let your readers have fun when they check out your site – make things more interesting, more fun, and more aesthetically appealing, and you will have no issue keeping your readers forever.

Utilize these tools and you’re sure to impress anybody that visits your site. Give them something to play with!

1.Drawer Effect
This example demonstrates the Apple downloads slider/accordion effect using the jQuery Accordion plugin.

Sliding Panels
Plugin for easy implementation of sliding panels.

Highlight and Fade
jQuery plugin used to get the fade and highlight effect.

Carousel
jCarousel is a jQuery plugin for controlling a list of items in horizontal or vertical order.

Simple Modal
A contact form built on SimpleModal.

Star Rating System
This is a jquery plugin for star rating systems.

Switch Stylesheets
The stylesheet switcher allows your visitors to choose which stylesheet they would like to view your site with.
Accordion Menu
Creating an Accordion menu.

Humanized Messages
A large and translucent message that’s displayed over the contents of your screen.

AJAX IM
AJAX IM is a browser-based instant messaging client.

Drag-and-Drop Content
Make any element on your website drag-and-droppable.

Instant Picture Effects
Allows you to add an instant picture effect (including tilt) to images on your webpages.

Fancy Form
FancyForm is a powerful checkbox replacement script used to provide the ultimate flexibility in changing the appearance and function of HTML form elements.

Image Flow
Sleek ‘Cover-Flow’ like effect for your images.

Nice Title
Create a floating title that is placable on any element on your website.

AJAX Poll
Create a fancy AJAX Poll for your website to help interact with your readers.

Curvy Corners
Create some very smooth rounded corners.

Checkbox
A replacement for the standard checkbox that allows you to change the look of checkbox elements in your page.

Easing
Some fancy “easing” effects for elements on your website.

Got more you want to add? Just drop a comment and share your opinions and feedback!

The following has been funded by Wet Paint

You can enhance your website when you create a free wiki because people will be able to add to and edit your wikis for an interactive experience.

  • This post was written by Brian
  • Website: http://elitebydesign.com
  • About: Brian is a blogger and web designer at Elite By Design. He has been blogging for over a year providing quality design-related articles for the community.
9 Comments RSS
  1. Reply readywpthemesNo Gravatar said on April 10th, 2008

    Thanks for this great collection….

  2. Reply Greg WardwellNo Gravatar said on April 10th, 2008

    This is a great list of effects! I’ve used JCarousel in the past.

    I would like to add Adobe’s Spry framework for Ajax to this list:
    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/home.html

    I’ve been experimenting with it lately and have found it to be a great option for a variety of my needs due to its ease of development as well as its variety of pre-built widgets. One of my personal favorites is the Spy Accordion Widget:
    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/accordion/AccordionSample.html#DefaultBehavior

    Like many widgets, creating a collection of elements on your page (divs in this case), giving them the appropriate id’s or classes, and calling your JavaScript function transforms your html into an accordion menu. Not only is it simple to implement, it degrades incredibly well.

  3. Reply Graham SmithNo Gravatar said on April 10th, 2008

    Yup, another fine collection. Like to bottom set of on and off buttons, very stylish.

    One of my fav’s but I know its quite popular is the Java LightBox script for displaying images in a semi transparent overlay over the entire screen, that sort of grows outward.

    Have added this to my site, for some of my photograph categories. I really like it, its not immediately obvious either until your click the image, nice and subtle.

    Also the various JQuery tabbed box menus you can get, too many to mention, but they all serve a useful purpose to tidy up your front end.

    JQuery is one technology that I am really excited about learning, seems to damn cool.

  4. Reply MarcoNo Gravatar said on April 10th, 2008

    There we go again, yet another great article!

    Stumbled + feautured on my website! Keep it up writing such useful posts.

  5. Reply Sandy FoxNo Gravatar said on April 10th, 2008

    Cool! I really like the floating title and checkbox. I am not much a coder though, so I’m sure I’ll have “fun” trying to implement it ;-)

  6. Reply Sandy FoxNo Gravatar said on April 11th, 2008

    Hey, i was just showing this page to a colleague from work and he didn’t know where the term “Klaatu Brada Nikto” came from (no, not army of darkness). Am I the only “old-timer who remember the movie?

  7. Reply Paul HempsallNo Gravatar said on April 19th, 2008

    Klaatu, Barada and Nikto were also creatures on Jabba’s sail barge in Return of the Jedi – a subtle nod from George Lucas to a great sci-fi film.

    I know… I ooze geek!

  8. [...] à votre site Internet avec Ajax 11 Avril 2008 Posted by simonhazout in 1. trackback Le site Elite by Design vient de publier une sélection d’effets visuels en JavaScript pour habiller et donner un peu [...]

  9. Trackback: Weekend Reading: Kickass Blogging and Design Articles posted on May 3rd, 2008

    [...] 19 Visual Effects That Entertain And Amuse by Brian [...]

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