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No.130 · Backgrounds

Bokeh City

A city at night through a fast lens wide open: every light a soft disc with the slightly brighter rim real bokeh has, in three depths that drift past each other with the pointer, twinkling — and along the bottom, traffic passing as long defocused streaks.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Muscat night

Build a canvas 2D background of out-of-focus city lights. Discs: pre-render one sprite per palette colour: a radial gradient with an even fill (alpha .5 → .56), a brighter rim (.74–.82 at 82–90% radius) and a soft falloff to zero by the edge — the look of real bokeh, without a hard edge. Scatter ~1 per 8,000px² (50–170) over the lower 60% of the frame (biased toward the middle, like a skyline) in three depths: far (7–16px radius, alpha ~.78, each over a wide edgeless glow three times its size), mid (18–38px, ~.46), near (40–86px, ~.24). Colours are drawn by weight from the theme's palette. Each disc twinkles (alpha × 0.75–1 on its own slow sine) and drifts sideways slowly, faster when nearer. All discs are drawn with additive ("lighter") compositing. Parallax: the pointer offsets each depth by a different amount (1.2%, 3.5%, 8% of the frame), eased at 2.5/s, so the layers slide past each other. Traffic: along the bottom, long soft capsule sprites (horizontal and vertical gradient masks) — red tail lights travelling right in the lower lane and white headlights travelling left in the upper, respawning off-screen. A radial vignette finishes the lens. One rAF loop while visible; ~33fps on touch; reduced motion draws one frame. Selected variant — Muscat night: theme="muscat": a warm city palette — mostly amber, warm white, cream and orange, with a little teal and blue; clear weather.

Notes

Interaction
Move the pointer to slide the depths past each other.
Motion
Discs twinkle and drift; traffic streaks at 90–210px/s; parallax eases at 2.5/s.
Accessibility
The canvas is aria-hidden and decorative; overlay text sits above it. Reduced motion draws one still frame.
Responsive
Disc count and traffic scale with the canvas; everything is rebuilt on resize.
On touch
No parallax on touch; the city still twinkles and traffic passes, at ~33fps.

Featured

01Glassbreak ButtonA solid plate that fractures from one impact point, cracks racing outward as the shards drift apart.04Liquid GlassA capsule of glass that bends what's behind it, carries a specular highlight around its rim toward your pointer, and squashes like a drop of liquid when pressed.07Phosphor Glass ButtonA liquid-glass pill that senses you coming: its rim light turns to face the cursor and the pill leans in to meet it.08Iris ShutterAn async button with a camera iris for a status light — blades close and turn while it works, then open onto the result.
81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components