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No.05 · Buttons

Spotlight Group

A toolbar of buttons that share one light: a soft glow follows the pointer across the whole group and catches the edges of whichever buttons are near, spilling over their neighbours.

The prompt

The design brief behind this component — reuse it to regenerate, remix, or explain it.

Build a rich-text formatting toolbar (Bold, Italic, Underline | Link, Quote, List | Code, Image) as square 40px icon buttons in a 16px-radius tray, with thin dividers between groups. On pointermove over the tray, write the pointer's position in tray coordinates to --x/--y. Give each button a 1px border layer (a ::before with padding 1px and a content-box mask composited with exclude) whose background is radial-gradient(110px circle at calc(--x − --bx) calc(--y − --by), lilac, frost, transparent) over a faint resting rim, where --bx/--by are that button's offsetLeft/offsetTop measured with a ResizeObserver. Every button positions the same light in the same place, so one spot of light moves across the group, lighting the nearest edges brightest and spilling onto the neighbours. A matching soft wash inside each button and a larger, dimmer light on the tray's own border complete it. The light fades in on enter and out on leave. Toggles use aria-pressed and keep a soft lilac-to-frost gradient fill with a tinted ring; actions (Link, Image) don't stay pressed. Icons are 1.7px stroke SVGs.

Notes

Interaction
Move across the toolbar and the light follows you over every button's edge. Click a toggle to switch it; actions fire once.
Motion
The light tracks the pointer directly; it fades in and out over 300ms.
Accessibility
A labelled role=toolbar of real buttons with one tab stop and arrow-key, Home and End navigation, each named by aria-label (with a matching title tooltip); toggles expose aria-pressed. Focus-visible draws an outline. The light is decorative and needs no motion setting, since it only moves with the pointer.
Responsive
Wraps onto a second row on very narrow screens; offsets are re-measured on resize.
On touch
Without hover the edges rest at their faint rim; pressed toggles still show their fill.

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301 components