What Is So Cool About These Buttons?

• Pure CSS: no image or Javascript is used.
• The gradient is cross-browser supported (IE, Firefox 3.6, Chrome, and Safari).
• Flexible and scalable: button size and rounded corners can be adjusted by changing the font size and padding values.
• It has three button states: normal, hover, and active.
• It can be applied to any HTML element: a, input, button, span, div, p, h3, etc.
• Fallback: if CSS3 is not supported, it will display a regular button (no gradient and shadow).

Preview

The image below shows how the button will display in different browsers.

Button States

• normal state = gradient with border and shadow styles.
• hover = darker gradient
• active = gradient is reversed, 1px down, and darker font color as well.

General Styles For The Button

The following code is the general styles for the .button class. I use em value in the padding and border-radius property to make it scalable base on the font-size. To adjust the rounded corners and button size, simply change the border-radius, font-size and padding values. For example: I can make a smaller button by decreasing the font-size and padding values.

.button {
	display: inline-block;
	outline: none;
	cursor: pointer;
	text-align: center;
	text-decoration: none;
	font: 14px/100% Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	padding: .5em 2em .55em;
	text-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.3);
	-webkit-border-radius: .5em; 
	-moz-border-radius: .5em;
	border-radius: .5em;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.2);
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.2);
	box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.2);
}
.button:hover {
	text-decoration: none;
}
.button:active {
	position: relative;
	top: 1px;
}

Color Gradient Styles

The code below is the CSS styling for the orange button. The first background line is a fallback for the non-CSS3 browsers, the second line is for Webkit browsers, the third line is for Firefox, and the last line is a gradient filter that is only read by Internet Explorer.

.orange {
	color: #fef4e9;
	border: solid 1px #da7c0c;
	background: #f78d1d;
	background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#faa51a), to(#f47a20));
	background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #faa51a,  #f47a20);
	filter:  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#faa51a', endColorstr='#f47a20');
}
.orange:hover {
	background: #f47c20;
	background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#f88e11), to(#f06015));
	background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #f88e11,  #f06015);
	filter:  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#f88e11', endColorstr='#f06015');
}
.orange:active {
	color: #fcd3a5;
	background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#f47a20), to(#faa51a));
	background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #f47a20,  #faa51a);
	filter:  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#f47a20', endColorstr='#faa51a');
}

How To Use My Buttons?

Lets say you like the blue button and want to use it on your page:

• First, copy the .button and .blue CSS
• Then, add class="button blue" to the HTML element where you want the button to be (eg. <a href="#" class="button blue">Button</a>). The CSS classes can be applied to any element such as link, p, span, div, input, button, etc.

The article source:http://webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/css3-gradient-buttons