--- title: This shouldn't be possible with CSS | daily.dev description: A walkthrough of building a CSS-only hover highlight effect for navigation using the CSS Anchor Positioning API. By assigning an anchor-name to a nav element... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/this-shouldn-t-be-possible-with-css-3qyqdqhg4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: This shouldn't be possible with CSS | daily.dev og:description: A walkthrough of building a CSS-only hover highlight effect for navigation using the CSS Anchor Positioning API. By assigning an anchor-name to a nav element... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/this-shouldn-t-be-possible-with-css-3qyqdqhg4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/3QyQDQhG4.png og:image:alt: This shouldn't be possible with CSS og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # This shouldn't be possible with CSS **[Kevin Powell](https://daily.dev/sources/kevinpowell)** · 2 min read · 1 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary A walkthrough of building a CSS-only hover highlight effect for navigation using the CSS Anchor Positioning API. By assigning an anchor-name to a nav element and a pseudo-element, and then reassigning that anchor-name on hover/focus to individual links, the pseudo-element smoothly moves to highlight whichever link is active. The trick relies on anchor positioning's behavior of always targeting the last element with a given anchor name. A spring-based easing from Easing Wizard is added via transition-timing-function to give the movement a bouncy, polished feel. No JavaScript required. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@yaireo** · 0 upvotes > what a stupid clickbait title. I'm NOT clicking ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Getting Started with Anchor Positioning • Josh W. Comeau](https://daily.dev/posts/getting-started-with-anchor-positioning-josh-w-comeau-gk8wgqtjg) · Josh W Comeau · 83 upvotes · 3 comments --- Tags: [#css](https://daily.dev/tags/css) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/this-shouldn-t-be-possible-with-css-3qyqdqhg4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"This shouldn't be possible with CSS","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-shouldn-t-be-possible-with-css-3qyqdqhg4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-shouldn-t-be-possible-with-css-3qyqdqhg4"},"datePublished":"2026-03-05T14:14:08.057Z","dateModified":"2026-03-05T14:14:25.324Z","description":"A walkthrough of building a CSS-only hover highlight effect for navigation using the CSS Anchor Positioning API. 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