I apologize for not posting on the Wall for the longest time, but yes, I’m still alive (just been busy with Themify). Today I have an awesome post to share — 30 great interactive sites. HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript have opened up many design possibilities. Web design nowadays is very interactive, it is no longer limited by static layouts. The 30 sites listed below demonstrate great examples of interactive web design. It ranges from simple transition effect to cool parallax scrolling to rich media presentation such as music audio and videos. Enjoy!
The Bienville Capital Management site offers seamless transition between pages. Try to click around the site and you will notice there is no redirection when navigating to different pages. The page transits smoothly with fading and sliding animation.
At the first glance, the Tool of North America site looks like a Flash site, but it is actually all done with Javascript, HTML5 and CSS3. The animation is super slick. The only downside is the content is not indexable by search engines because it is pulled with Ajax (not SEO friendly at all). If you disable Javascript, you will get a blank page. Despite the SEO and accessibilty issue, the interaction is amazing. Don’t forget to check out the site on mobile; it is also nicely done.
The background’s blurry effect is particularly stunning on the Whiteboard site. To see it yourself: narrow your browser to mobile breakpoint or check it on a mobile device and click on the menu icon, the background will be transformed with the blur effect.
Simply beautiful illustrations presented with parallax scrolling! Check out the Parallax theme if you like parallax scrolling effect.
The main background animation on Mahedine’s site consists of 191 images (each image is about 56kb file size, 470 x 264px). It produces frame-by-frame animation effect as you scroll.
The Life of Pi jorney site has taken parallax scrolling and frame-by-frame animation to another level. If you like the movie, you will definitely enjoy scrolling on their site. It shows you behind the scene materials in frame-by-frame animation as you scroll. The result is breath-taking with just over 100 images with heavy Javascript and CSS3 work.
Each story (post) on Teehan+Lax is beautifully crafted with great attention to details. The content is presented with beautiful typesetting and subtle animation effects (eg. check these two posts). In case you are not aware of this minor UX detail: when you are at the middle of the page, notice the top nav bar slides down when you scroll up and it slides up again when you scroll down. The logic makes perfect sense. When you scroll down, you probably want to continue to read, so you don’t want the nav bar to obstruct your reading area. When you scroll up, the nav bar appears in case you want to jump to another page.
The page transition on Coffee Surfing illy site is not as seamless as the Bienville Capital Management site as mentioned above, but the half page scrolling is interesting. When you scroll, the page is divided in half and scroll in opposite direction.
Satorisan has a very nice shop design. The shop main page allows you to view all products in a scrollable/draggable horizontal list. Clicking on any product will transit to the product detail page with parallax scrolling effect.
Wink did an awesome job on their responsive and interactive website. Whether you are viewing the site on a large iMac screen or a tiny iPhone display, the design and animation is very consistent.
From design to interaction, the Solasie site is two thumbs up. It was pleasant browsing on the site to enjoy the rich media content (gallery images, music, and videos). The only problem is the SEO and accessibilty issue. The content is not indexable and the page URLs can not be shared because the pages are queried with Ajax. This is a common problem with sites relying on Ajax to display the content, but they often provide anchor tags in the URL bar for sharing pages.
The timeline presentation on the REI 1440 site is very suitable for their concept, “minute-by-minute” timeline making up a 24-hour period. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the timeline which saves time from moving your mouse and clicking. Try out their clock time selector — from design concept to technical execution, all were done excellently!
The text masking on the navigation menu is a nice touch to the site.
Anonymous agency not only makes good design, but they present their portfolio well. The portfolio images were masked with silhouette of faces — very cute! The portfolio expander might seem like it is pulled with Ajax, but they are actually separate pages. Also, notice the tiny detail of the year bubble tooltip as you scroll through the portfolio items?
The Beatbox Academy lets you create drum beats by hitting certain keys on your keyboard. It doen’t really serve any other purposes (you can not save or export the beats), but it is fun. The parallax scrolling on the site is nicely done though.
Quartz puts the center focus on the content. Unlike most news/editorial sites where they force you to click on the article to read full story, Quartz displays all articles with full content on one page. As you scroll through the articles, the address bar automatically updates the URL (good for sharing articles). Their mobile breakpoint provides the same browsing experience as on the desktop.
If you are a parallax scrolling lover, this Bond Cars site by Evens Halshaw is a must see.
Another parallax scrolling site.
If you think the above parallax scrolling sites are cool, wait until you see the Peugeot Hybrid4 site below — nice illustrations, keyframe animation, awesome sound effects, and great transition. Don’t forget to turn on your speakers while checking the site.
Chrysler’s Test of Ownership site is another good example of page transition. The page layout/content transits nicely when switching different pages. Not to mention the beautiful animation on the Proof page. Scrolling down will animate the numbers, charts, and bars. Scrolling up will reverse the animation. Simple, but cool.
As you scroll on the Tinke site, it shows you a complete walk-through of the product, all in action! Unfortunately, it is not responsive.
Have you seen a police site this cool with Ajax and parallax scrolling?
Although the tree branch styled menu on the 2am Media site reminds of the old school Flash sites, but it is incredible with Javascript!
Minimal Monkey is a simple site by Stephen Burgess which offers great user experience. The layout, page transition, and navigation are very well thought-out on all responsive breakpoints.
Athenos is a lovely site with a lot of design details and transition effects. It has also proven that modern sites are heavy on page load. Just this animated GIF file on the site is 2.5mb. Beauty does come with file size!
Meng To presents his works nicely with big bold images and fly-in animation.
The RED agency site is full of design details and animation effects. Be sure to click around the site.
If you miss the old-school Flash sites with drag and drop navigation, check out the Carbon Studio site.
The Oakley Airbrake MX site is another crazy example of parallax scrolling. The product tour is visually stunning!
Nick Jones’s site might be outdated, but the interaction design is still very good.
Most of these sites are found on Best Web Gallery. Thanks to Chad Mueller for managing and collecting inspirational sites on Best Web Gallery. Check out Best Web Gallery for more sites.
Summer Mote
I love where websites trends are heading. It’s a very exciting time for web designers – again. Responsive themes for mobile, interactive themes, etc bring web design back to life in my opinion. Thanks for the gallery of pics!!
James George
Awesome Post! I love the REI 1440 site! That is a really creative way to do their website that really works. I am glad you’re not “dead” LOL. I have always been a big fan of your site and I am glad to see a new post!
Victoria
I love the list and especially Anonymous – super creative. All the sites are cool and inspiring, but as a professional I understand that SEO unfriendly is a very bad diagnosis today – as such beautiful sites would not be found by many people – hope with html5 and other innovations we will see more interactive and SEO firendly site, that would be easy ot find in Gooogle
Jerralyn Tanoc
Amazing post! These sites are really interactive and can be used as design inspirations. Thank you for sharing this.
HautStyle
Absolutely amazing selection! Love the “Life of Pi”. Brilliant!
You could add the lately released website http://www.justareflektor.com develop by Google for Arcade Fire. It’s amazing too!
Tim
Some great sites here. Except for this one: Coffee Surfing illy.
It scrolls too fast and each section is counted as a different page. Leads to annoying navigation problems and no way I saw to pause it. If you scroll with the mouse it seems to speed it up, too.
Pauline C.
Great finds! My favorite is the last one.
Emre
Was a long time We missed your blog posts.
Lucian
My favorite was Life of Pi storytelling website. Just amazing.
Here’s another cool one. Bonus if you click the client section which took quite some work to implement;) http://www.ignitepartnership.com/
Sara
“Beatbox Academy” is a great fun.. :)
Texturezine
both of them are nice but Minimal monkey simple great love it!
Sue
This list is really inspiring. I really enjoy the parallax scrolling sites with animations. Peugeot Hybrid4 and Life of Pi are my favorites because they use parallax scrolling to tell a story, and it must have taken a long time to plan and make them. Minimal Monkey is great too for a different reason: it’s simple yet effective. It takes a different approach to how blog posts are presented from the usual. The navigation is great and well thought out.
dawood
Is it only me who thinks that the sites no matter how awesome and eye candy they are but when they start the loading they fail to serve the very basic function of having a website.
I would be honest i closed my browser window then the loading reached 20% for the website mentioned above ” Coffee Surfing illy “
Tino
I think so too. Most of these sites show very well what can be done technically, but from a users point of view they are a nightmare to navigate. Loading times of several ten seconds drive most visitors away anyway before any content can be seen. I think it’s allways been like this when new new technologie becomes available: it is way overused at first. Later when the exitement has settled a little we start to build usable websites again with our new technologie applyed sparingly in places where it is of real advantage…
Neha
Love to see you back. Again an inspiring article. I just thought webdesignerwall is no more. But happy to see the article again. :)
4dable
Great to see you back and another great article! We love to see the evolution and always interchanging world of web design. looking forward to things to come. Cheers!
Webtex
Some of these sites are already my favourite ones!) in general they all are amazing!)
ryantonner
I like you last tutorial “how to make a mobile navigation”, and “how to create an interactive map of the world”, both are useful and I like all its features.
http://www.element8me.com/
Kalpesh Panchal
Wow.. All are really inspiring and cool websites. Many are from awwwards. Theres a lot to learn from them. Thanks for sharing.
Elo Boost
Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is magnificent, let alone the content!. Thanks For Your article.
sharjah uae
Loving the website of Beatbox .. We made similar sites to the above and one of our sites has been chosen for the AWWWards ‘Site of the Day’
Be sure to check us out for inspirations http://www.skyblueoceanmedia.com
Theo
Great list! Some are unbelievable, all are awesome… Thanks for this post, i’ll have to digest it.
Theo
Just forgot to share this one, happy scrolling :)
Nil Khara
This is very nice and helping post for web designers. Those web sites are unique inspiring and containing feature bale. We learn from those websites that helping us in our professional field.
Michael
Wow! Great list of really cool websites, very inspiring!
Thanks a lot! :-)
Joey Ambrose
That REI site is amazing! I think the best sites here are the ones that do a beautiful job of integrating data with design, making it a truly interactive experience.
Sergey
Welcome back, Nick! great list here, thanks! :)
Arbaz
Great list and some really cool designs.
I really liked the Whiteboard and the Life of Pi sites. Thanks for sharing these list of interactive sites :)
kered pople
Some of these websites catch my eye and look quite wonderful. I love the creative idea of the New York City website and the moving vehicles.
It is quite obvious there has been a lot of work put into theses websites and they offer high quality design inspirations.
Thanks for the post.
Howard Davidson
Excellent post. Carbon studio is one of the best website i have ever seen :)
Thanks
Jack Pitter
All website’s design are very amazing and looking so classic. I found really very inspiring and cool website designs here which i never seen before these.
C.A Brown
These are some awesome, websites thank you for sharing these
gave me a some inspiration
jual online
I like “Sketchin”
James Allen
Cyclemon is just simply awesome. I just see and like it just because of its elegant and eye catching design.
Joe Bass
I’d have to say Tinke is my favorite. That’s an incredible experience as you move through the page.
motorcycles 1/4 mile
Oh my goodness! Impressive article dude! Many thanks, However I am experiencing problems with your RSS.
I don’t understand the reason why I am unable to join it. Is there anybody getting identical RSS issues?
Anyone who knows the solution can you kindly respond? Thanks!!
Vail Joy
The RSS url is https://webdesignerwall.mystagingwebsite.com/feed/ and should work with most readers or sites/apps like Feedly.
Anup
One of ths most beautiful animated website : http://www.genximedia.com/