How to Build a Stylish CSS3 Search Box

A search box is probably one of the most common UI elements around, and I think there is no need to explain its purpose anymore. Whether it’s about a website or a web application, to increase user experience for it, you may want to add a stylish search box.

Today, you will learn how to create a nice CSS3 search box using pseudo-elements.

The HTML

As you can see below, the markup is minimal and easy to understand:

<form class="form-wrapper cf">
        <input type="text" placeholder="Search here..." required>
        <button type="submit">Search</button>
    </form>   

You may have noticed the HTML5’s specific attributes like placeholder and required, here’s a short description:

• placeholder– Basically, this attribute shows a text in a field until the field is focused upon, then it just hides the text.
• required– This specifies that the current element is a required part of a form submission.

HTML5 also brought us a new value for the type attribute: type="search". Though, because of cross browser inconsistency, I decided to skip it for now.

Quick Tip

HTML elements like img and input have no content, therefore, a pseudo-element like :before will not render any arrow for our search button.

My solution was to use the button type="submit" element instead of casual input type="submit". This way, we can preserve the submitting form on ENTER key functionality.

The CSS

Below you can find the necessary styles for our demo:

Clear Floats

.cf:before, .cf:after{
    content:"";
    display:table;
}

.cf:after{
    clear:both;
}

.cf{
    zoom:1;
}    

Form Elements

Prefixed properties like -moz-box-shadow weren’t included, I just wanted to keep the following code clean. Though, they are included in the demo example.

/* Form wrapper styling */
.form-wrapper {
    width: 450px;
    padding: 15px;
    margin: 150px auto 50px auto;
    background: #444;
    background: rgba(0,0,0,.2);
    border-radius: 10px;
    box-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.4) inset, 0 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,.2);
}

/* Form text input */

.form-wrapper input {
    width: 330px;
    height: 20px;
    padding: 10px 5px;
    float: left;    
    font: bold 15px 'lucida sans', 'trebuchet MS', 'Tahoma';
    border: 0;
    background: #eee;
    border-radius: 3px 0 0 3px;      
}

.form-wrapper input:focus {
    outline: 0;
    background: #fff;
    box-shadow: 0 0 2px rgba(0,0,0,.8) inset;
}

.form-wrapper input::-webkit-input-placeholder {
   color: #999;
   font-weight: normal;
   font-style: italic;
}

.form-wrapper input:-moz-placeholder {
    color: #999;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: italic;
}

.form-wrapper input:-ms-input-placeholder {
    color: #999;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: italic;
}    

/* Form submit button */
.form-wrapper button {
    overflow: visible;
    position: relative;
    float: right;
    border: 0;
    padding: 0;
    cursor: pointer;
    height: 40px;
    width: 110px;
    font: bold 15px/40px 'lucida sans', 'trebuchet MS', 'Tahoma';
    color: #fff;
    text-transform: uppercase;
    background: #d83c3c;
    border-radius: 0 3px 3px 0;      
    text-shadow: 0 -1px 0 rgba(0, 0 ,0, .3);
}   
  
.form-wrapper button:hover{     
    background: #e54040;
}   
  
.form-wrapper button:active,
.form-wrapper button:focus{   
    background: #c42f2f;
    outline: 0;   
}

.form-wrapper button:before { /* left arrow */
    content: '';
    position: absolute;
    border-width: 8px 8px 8px 0;
    border-style: solid solid solid none;
    border-color: transparent #d83c3c transparent;
    top: 12px;
    left: -6px;
}

.form-wrapper button:hover:before{
    border-right-color: #e54040;
}

.form-wrapper button:focus:before,
.form-wrapper button:active:before{
        border-right-color: #c42f2f;
}      

.form-wrapper button::-moz-focus-inner { /* remove extra button spacing for Mozilla Firefox */
    border: 0;
    padding: 0;
}    

That’s all!

I hope you liked this tutorial and I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it. Thank you for reading!