Pure CSS Gallery with Zoom Hover Effect

This pure CSS code snippet helps you to create an image gallery with a zoom hover effect. The gallery consists of an unordered list of images, each wrapped in a list item element. The images are displayed as thumbnails in the gallery. When the user hovers over a thumbnail, a hover effect is triggered, which enlarges the thumbnail and displays additional information or effects.

How to Create Pure CSS Gallery with Zoom Hover Effect

First of all, load the PrefixFree JS by adding the following CDN link into the head tag of your HTML document.

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prefixfree/1.0.7/prefixfree.min.js"></script>

After that, create the HTML structure for the gallery as follows. Add your image inside the li as many as you need.

<header>
		<h1>Thumbnail Hover Effect with <em>CSS3</em></h1>
	</header>
	<div class="wrapper">
		<div class="gallery">
			<ul>
				<li><img src="path/to/image.jpg"></li>
				<li><img src="path/to/image.jpg"></li>
			</ul>
		</div>
		<p class="attribution">Images featured in this demo are the works of <a href="https://d.hatena.ne.jp/koochinko">Mernan Behairi</a>. Inspired by an old post of <a href="https://twitter.com/SohTanaka">@Sohtanaka</a>. It originally uses jQuery. Access original <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110323065449/http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/fancy-thumbnail-hover-effect-w-jquery/">tutorial</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110323065952/http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/image-zoom/">demo</a>.</p>
	</div>

Style the image gallery using the following CSS styles:

@import url(https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto+Condensed:700);
body {
	background-color: #f2f2f2;
}

header {
	width: 100%;
	background-color: #77cdb4;
	text-align: center;
}

h1 {
	font-family: 'Roboto Condensed', sans-serif;
	color: #FFF;
	font-size: 2.3em;
}

em {
	color: #232027;
}

.wrapper {
	width: 40%;
	margin: 40px auto;
}

div.gallery {
	margin-top: 30px;
}

div.gallery ul {
	list-style-type: none;
	margin-left: 35px;
}

/* animation */
div.gallery ul li, div.gallery li img {
	-webkit-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;
  	-moz-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;
  	-o-transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;
  	transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;
}

div.gallery ul li {
	position: relative;
	float: left;
	width: 130px;
	height: 130px;
	margin: 5px;
	padding: 5px;
	z-index: 0;
}

/* Make sure z-index is higher on hover */
/* Ensure that hover image overlapped the others */
div.gallery ul li:hover {
	z-index: 5;
}

/* Image is position nicely under li */
div.gallery ul li img {
	position: absolute;
	left: 0;
	top: 0;
	border: 1px solid #dddddd;
	padding: 5px;
	width: 130px;
	height: 130px;
	background: #f0f0f0;
}

div.gallery ul li img:hover {
	width: 200px;
	height: 200px;
	margin-top: -130px;
	margin-left: -130px;
	top: 65%;
	left: 65%;
}

p.attribution {
	font-family: 'Consolas';
	color: #000;
	clear: both;
	text-align: center;
	line-height: 25px;
	padding-top: 30px;
}

p.attribution a {
	color: #4c8d7c;
}

/* Responsive hack */
@media only screen and (min-width: 499px) and (max-width: 1212px) {
	.wrapper {
		width: 500px;
	}
}

@media only screen and (max-width: 498px) {
	.wrapper {
		width: 300px;
	}

	div.gallery ul {
		list-style-type: none;
		margin: 0;
	}
}

That’s all! hopefully, you have successfully created a pure CSS image gallery with zoom hover effect. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment below.