Atypical Uses of Radio Buttons and Checkboxes for Building Interactive UI Widgets

Radio buttons and checkboxes are traditionally associated with forms and data, however if you spend some time playing with these elements and CSS you will certainly find a lot more possible and not so boring uses. Here are a few, which will maybe give you ideas and will inspire you.

Star Rating Widget

Fully functional star rating widget, utilizing simple HTML form, hidden radio buttons, adjacent sibling selectors and right-to-left, with hover, selection, persisted state and disabling (a.k.a. already voted).

Animated CSS3 Vertical Accordion

The widget utilizes a simple form with radio buttons, CSS3 animations and adjacent sibling selectors.

CSS3 Treeview

Fully functional, multi-level CSS3-only treeview with persisted state, utilizing hidden checkboxes and list elements.

CSS3 Treeview with Nested Nodes Selection. Almost JavaScript-less.

Similar to the treeview from the previous example, but with updated look and feel and added support for nested nodes selection via an additional checkbox.

CSS3 Tabstrip

Feature-complete CSS3-only tabstrip widget, utilizing hidden radio buttons.

Notifications Bar

JavaScript-less animated notifications bar, utilizing a couple of div elements and a single hidden checkbox.

iPhone Toggle Buttons

Fully functional iPhone-like toggle buttons, made up of labels, radio buttons or checkboxes.

Animated CSS3-only Slides Viewer

Fully functional presentation slides viewer, utilizing radio buttons, CSS counters and animations with native keyboard arrow support.

Custom Skinnable Radio Buttons and Checkboxes

My favorite approach for styling radio buttons and checkboxes with semantic and minimalistic markup.

Enjoy the weekend!

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