The Deep Card Conundrum

"Imagine a card that isn't just a 2D plane, but a container with actual volume. A card that holds a miniature 3D world inside it. When you rotate this card, you don't just see it skew, you see the elements inside it shift in perspective, revealing their depth. It's like holding a glass box filled with floating objects. The effect is mesmerizing."

"But as I quickly discovered, building this illusion, especially one that feels right and performs smoothly, is a bit more of a puzzle than it first appears. There are plenty of JavaScript libraries out there that can handle this, but I'm a bit of a CSS purist (read: stubborn). I've spent years pushing stylesheets to their absolute limits, and I was convinced that a clean, performant, pure CSS solution was hiding in plain sight."

Deep Card converts a flat UI card into a volumetric container that holds layered elements in 3D space, producing a window-like, tactile effect when rotated. The effect reveals depth as child elements shift perspective, akin to a glass box with floating objects. Use cases include trading-card interfaces, premium product showcases, and standout portfolios. Creating the illusion requires setting container perspective, positioning children with translateZ and rotate transforms, and using transform-style: preserve-3d. Many JavaScript libraries can emulate the effect, but a clean, performant pure-CSS approach is desirable yet tricky. The main technical hurdle is preserving content clipping and smooth performance while maintaining the card boundary.

Read at Frontendmasters