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No.69 · Cards

Liquid Glass Card

A now-playing card of thick glass: clear in the middle, bending the scene behind it more and more toward its edges, with a highlight that rides the rim toward your pointer.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Dusk

Build a now-playing card (22.5rem, 28px radius) made of thick glass over a colourful scene. Base glass: 8% white, backdrop blur and saturation, an inner top highlight, a faint inner ring and a soft lower inner glow. In Chromium, add real edge refraction. Measure the card with a ResizeObserver and build a displacement map as an SVG data URL at exactly that size: black, a left→right red gradient, a top→bottom blue gradient blended with difference, and a neutral grey rounded rect inset 22px and blurred, so the middle maps to 'no shift' and the offsets ramp up only across the bezel. Feed it through feImage into feDisplacementMap (scale −64, R for x, B for y) and apply it with backdrop-filter: url(#lens) blur(5px) saturate(1.7). Other browsers keep the plain blur. A 1.25px rim, made with a content-box mask, carries a radial highlight placed at the pointer, with a matching soft caustic inside. Content: a gradient artwork tile, 'Now playing' in mono caps, title and artist, a slim range scrubber whose filled part is a gradient stop at --p, elapsed and remaining times, back 15 / play-pause / forward 30, and an 'Up next' line. The play button is a smaller drop of glass that squashes (1.12 × 0.86, springing back) when pressed. Selected variant — Dusk: Dusk scene: base #140c1d behind blurred blobs of coral #ff7a59, violet #8b5cf6, gold #f5c26b and pink #e0457b; default warm gradient artwork.

Notes

Interaction
Move over the card and the rim's highlight follows you. Play and pause, skip, or drag the scrubber.
Motion
Rim highlight tracks the pointer directly; play squish 620ms spring.
Accessibility
An article named 'Now playing: title by artist'. The scrubber is a native range with a spoken value like '1:12 of 3:48'; every control is a labelled button. Reduced motion removes the squish.
Responsive
Up to 22.5rem wide, shrinking to fit; the lens map is rebuilt whenever the size changes.
On touch
The rim highlight rests at the top-left; everything else works by tap.

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.
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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