How to Create CSS Conic Gradients for Pie Charts and More

More and more websites use gradients in one way or another. Some websites use them for navigation components, while others use them in elements like buttons, or with images to create some nice effects.

All browsers have had support for basic CSS linear and radial gradients for a long time now. The CSS Gradients: A Syntax Crash Course article on SitePoint gives you a quick summary of the syntax required to create linear and radial gradients, as well as how to use repeating gradients to create some basic patterns, which is great if you care about web performance and try to avoid using images whenever possible.

After linear and radial gradients, browsers are now slowly starting to support conic gradients, which were first championed by Lea Verou.

In this article, you will learn about the syntax, uses, and browser support for simple conic gradients and repeating conic gradients.

What are Conic Gradients?

Conic and radial gradients are similar in the sense that both of them start from a specified or default point as the center of the circle used to draw them. The difference between the two is that, in the case of radial gradients the color-stops are placed along the radial line, while in the case of conic gradients the color stops are placed along the circumference of the circle.

The position of color-stops for a conic gradient can be specified either in terms of percentage or in terms of degrees. A value of 0% or 0deg refers to the top of the conic gradient. The values keep increasing gradually as you move clockwise. A value of 360deg is equivalent to 0deg. Any color whose color-stop value is greater than 100% or 360deg won't be drawn on the conic gradient but it will still affect its color distribution.

The following image shows a conic gradient that starts with a yellow color and ends with orange.

It is hard not to notice the sharp transition that separates the orange at 360deg from the yellow at 0deg. Remember that conic gradients always produce this transition whenever the starting and ending colors of the conic gradient are very different. One way to avoid it is setting the starting and ending color to the same value.

Syntax for Conic Gradients

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by Gajendar Singh via SitePoint