Stacking sticky cards

Demo

A short deck piles up through native sticky positioning, with a tunable top-edge offset.

How it works

Scroll· 4 sites

Reference: CSS sticky positioning, MDN contributors

How it works

A short deck piles up through native sticky positioning, with a tunable top-edge offset.In 5 steps.

The next card does the moving; the previous one simply stays put. CSS sticky gives the deck its physical logic without turning scrolling into a JavaScript animation. Small exposed edges keep the sequence legible.

The controls below are authored demonstration values, not measurements of the linked sites. The stored fits currently describe scroll smoothing and intro curves, not this effect's geometry; see each site's spec sheet for those separately measured values and fit errors.

  1. 01

    Keep the cards in document order

    Each card remains a real article in a tall section. Its natural position determines when it reaches the stack.

  2. 02

    Offset each sticky top

    Add a small edge offset per card so earlier layers remain visible. Later DOM siblings paint above earlier ones.

  3. 03

    Leave room after the last card

    A tail below the deck lets the last card reach its sticky position before the parent releases the stack.

  4. 04

    Unstack for reduced motion

    Remove sticky positioning so all card text remains available without overlapping.

  5. 05

    Dispose cleanly

    Call destroy() when the view unmounts to disconnect resize and preference observers, remove scroll listeners and cancel pending frames.

Code

The code

The engine is the file the demo above runs, framework-agnostic; the Svelte and React tabs wire it into a component.

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Prompt

Prompt pack

A short deck piles up through native sticky positioning, with a tunable top-edge offset.

1 prompts in Pro Generated 25 Sep 2026

  • Build it with a coding agentA framework-independent implementation brief with authored controls.

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Performance & accessibility

Performance

The sticky movement is browser-owned. JavaScript only changes the edge spacing when a control changes; it does not write per-frame card transforms. Avoid expensive filters and large shadows on overlapping layers. The demo targets a frame budget suitable for phone displays; profile on the target device rather than treating an unloaded desktop frame counter as a guarantee. The host pauses the demo off screen. The standalone engine removes its observers and listeners on destroy.

Reduced motion

Reduced motion gives a readable still or ordinary document flow, without an automatic loop. Live preference changes are respected. The scroll region is keyboard-focusable; touch remains native. Keep essential information outside decorative layers and do not add live announcements for motion.

Source

Source, credited

Original teaching implementation and CSS artwork, informed by the credited CSS sticky positioning documentation and the library's linked site observations. No source site's code or assets are reproduced. A site link describes the observed visual pattern, not proof that the site uses this engine or browser API.

Seen in the library

Sites using this effect.