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No.04 · Buttons

Liquid Glass

A 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.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Pills

Make a glass button meant to sit over imagery. The capsule has a 10% white body and a backdrop filter of blur(10px) saturate(1.8) brightness(1.08); where SVG backdrop filters are supported, a second declaration prepends url(#lens) — an feTurbulence (0.008/0.012) → feDisplacementMap (scale 16) — so the scene behind bends softly like liquid glass (browsers that don't understand it keep the plain blur). Depth comes from stacked inset shadows: a bright 1px top edge, a faint lower edge, a hairline ring, a low inner glow, and a soft drop shadow. A specular highlight rides the rim: a pseudo layer with 1.25px padding, masked to just the ring (content-box xor), filled with a radial gradient centred on the pointer's --mx/--my, so the brightest point of the edge travels toward your finger. A faint internal caustic follows the same point. Pressing plays a 620ms jelly squash — scale(1.06, 0.9) → (0.97, 1.04) → (1.015, 0.99) → 1 — on a springy curve. Place it over a slowly drifting colourful scene (blurred radial blobs, 14s alternate drift, still under reduced motion) so there is something for the glass to bend. Selected variant — Pills: Pills: two capsule buttons, "Get started" and a frost-tinted "Watch the film ↗" (tint "185 204 228"), over a blue/green/magenta scene on #0b1220.

Notes

Interaction
Move over it to steer the rim highlight; press to squash it.
Motion
Specular follows the pointer via CSS variables; 620ms spring squash on press; 300ms hover tint.
Accessibility
Real buttons with labels (icon buttons have aria-label, play toggles aria-pressed); text has a subtle shadow for contrast on busy backgrounds. Reduced motion removes the squash.
Responsive
Intrinsic width; round buttons are 52px square.
On touch
Press squash works on touch; the rim rests at the top edge.

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301 components