Building a responsive testimonial slider with HTML and CSS

Testimonials are a great way to showcase the success stories of your business or services. They can help build trust and credibility among potential customers. And what's better than displaying these testimonials in a slider format on your website? In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to create a responsive testimonial slider with HTML and CSS.

Step 1: Setting up the HTML structure

First, let's create the basic HTML structure for our testimonial slider. We will use a div container to hold all the testimonial items, and each testimonial item will consist of a quote and the author's name.

<div class="testimonial-slider">
  <div class="testimonial">
    <blockquote>"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer posuere erat a ante."</blockquote>
    <cite>- John Doe</cite>
  </div>
  <div class="testimonial">
    <blockquote>"Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas."</blockquote>
    <cite>- Jane Doe</cite>
  </div>
  <!-- Add more testimonial items here -->
</div>

Step 2: Styling the testimonial slider

Now let's add some CSS styles to make our testimonial slider look good. We will use a simple card layout for each testimonial item and use Flexbox to align them in a row.

.testimonial-slider {
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: nowrap;
  overflow-x: auto;
  -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
}

.testimonial {
  background-color: #f7f7f7;
  border-radius: 5px;
  box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
  margin-right: 20px;
  padding: 20px;
  width: 400px;
  flex: 0 0 auto;
}

.testimonial blockquote {
  font-size: 1.2rem;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

.testimonial cite {
  display: block;
  font-size: 1.1rem;
  font-style: normal;
  margin-top: 10px;
  text-align: right;
}

Let's go over the CSS styles we just added:

• We set the display property of the testimonial-slider to flex and flex-wrap to nowrap, which means that the testimonial items will be displayed in a row and will not wrap to the next line.
• We added overflow-x: auto to the testimonial-slider to enable horizontal scrolling. We also added -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch for smoother scrolling on touch devices.
• We set the background-color of each testimonial item to #f7f7f7 and added some border-radius and box-shadow to give it a card-like appearance.
• We added some margin-right and padding to the testimonial item, and set its width to 400px. We also set its flex property to 0 0 auto, which means that it will not grow or shrink and will maintain its original size.
• We styled the blockquote and cite tags inside each testimonial item to make the quote and author's name look good.

Step 3: Making the slider responsive

Our testimonial slider looks good, but it is not yet fully responsive. Let's add some media queries to make it look good on smaller screens.

@media (max-width: 768px) {
  .testimonial-slider {
    flex-wrap: wrap;
    justify-content: center;
  }
  
  .testimonial {
    margin-bottom: 20px;
    width: 80%;
  }
}

In the above media query, we made the following changes:

• We set the flex-wrap property of the testimonial-slider to wrap and justify-content to center. This means that on smaller screens, the testimonial items will be wrapped to the next line and centered within the container.
• We added a margin-bottom of 20px to each testimonial item to create some space between them.
• We reduced the width of each testimonial item to 80% to make them fit better on smaller screens.

Step 4: Adding animation to the slider

Finally, let's add some animation to our testimonial slider. We will use CSS transitions to create a smooth sliding effect when the user scrolls the slider.

.testimonial-slider {
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: nowrap;
  overflow-x: auto;
  -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
  scroll-behavior: smooth;
  transition: transform 0.3s ease-in-out;
}

.testimonial-slider::-webkit-scrollbar {
  height: 5px;
}

.testimonial-slider::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb {
  background-color: #ccc;
  border-radius: 5px;
}

.testimonial-slider:hover {
  transform: scale(1.02);
}

Let's break down the changes we made:

• We added scroll-behavior: smooth to the testimonial-slider to create a smooth scrolling effect when the user interacts with the slider.
• We added a transition property to the testimonial-slider and set it to transform 0.3s ease-in-out. This means that when the transform property of the slider changes, it will do so smoothly over a period of 0.3 seconds with an ease-in-out timing function.
• We added some styles for the scrollbar of the slider using the ::-webkit-scrollbar and ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb selectors.
• We added a hover effect to the testimonial-slider using the :hover selector. When the user hovers over the slider, it will scale up slightly using the transform property.

And there you have it, a fully responsive testimonial slider with HTML and CSS! You can further customize the slider by adding more styles, changing the animation, or using JavaScript to add additional functionality.

Before we wrap up, let's review what we've learned:

• Testimonials are an important aspect of building trust and credibility with potential customers, and a testimonial slider is an effective way to showcase them on a website.
• We can build a testimonial slider using HTML and CSS, without the need for JavaScript.
• To build a responsive testimonial slider, we can use CSS media queries to adjust the styles based on the screen size.
• We can add animation to the slider using CSS transitions and hover effects.

With these skills, you can create and customize your own testimonial slider to fit the needs of your website. Remember to keep the user experience in mind and test your slider on various devices to ensure it looks and functions properly.

Happy coding!