52 JavaScript Gallery Examples

In a world obsessed with speed, we often forget the power of distinct intent. The standard “click” is binary and abrupt. This component introduces a moment of pause — a “breath” — allowing the user to peek into content without committing to a navigation event. By utilizing the “long press” (or click-and-hold) mechanic, we bridge the gap between desktop precision and mobile intuition, creating a gallery experience that feels organic and responsive to the user’s curiosity.

This Adaptive Thumbnail Carousel is a versatile gallery component that seamlessly bridges the gap between desktop and mobile UX. On desktop, it presents a traditional filmstrip of thumbnails. On mobile, it intelligently morphs into a dot-navigation style, where hovering (or tapping) a dot reveals a floating preview of the image. The carousel handles state synchronization, smooth scrolling, and accessibility, making it a robust choice for e-commerce product pages or portfolios.

This Scroll-Driven Image Swapper demonstrates the bleeding edge of web animation. It uses the native CSS Scroll-driven Animations API to create a complex parallax-like effect where two columns of different heights scroll in sync. As you scroll, the images in the shorter column slide and crossfade to match the context of the taller column. Crucially, the code implements a Progressive Enhancement strategy: it checks for native browser support and falls back to GSAP ScrollTrigger for browsers that haven’t implemented the spec yet.

This Atmospheric Split-View Gallery creates an immersive, story-driven experience reminiscent of a digital scrapbook. It combines a full-screen horizontal slider with a “flip-card” mechanic to reveal hidden content. The visual style defines the component, utilizing CSS mix-blend-mode to fuse historical black-and-white photography with a grunge paper texture, creating a cohesive, vintage aesthetic.

This Tearing Paper Photo Gallery is a technical marvel that simulates the physical act of ripping a photograph in half. Unlike simple 2D masking effects, this component uses WebGL (Three.js) to deform the geometry in 3D space. As the user drags downward, the “paper” mesh splits, rotates, and tears along a procedural edge, complete with lighting and shadow effects generated by custom shaders.

This Draggable 3D Cube goes beyond standard CSS 3D transforms by implementing a custom “lighting engine” using JavaScript. As the user drags to rotate the carousel, the opacity of each face is dynamically calculated based on its angle relative to the viewport. This creates a realistic shading effect - faces facing the viewer are bright and fully opaque, while those turning away fade into the background, enhancing the perception of depth without using WebGL.

This Interactive 3D Photo Cube creates a spatial navigation experience where a user explores six images mapped onto a cube by moving their cursor. Unlike standard sliders, it utilizes CSS 3D transforms orchestrated by GSAP to create a seamless, physics-like rotation. The snippet also features a “window-pane” parallax effect where the background images shift slightly inside their frames, adding an extra layer of depth.

An infinite 3D card carousel powered by GSAP ScrollTrigger.

An image gallery featuring seamless “hero” transitions powered by GSAP Flip. Clicking an item expands it into a detailed view overlaid on the dimmed grid, smoothly animating position and scale.

A horizontal scrolling gallery where the background color smoothly transitions to match the current image, triggered by the Intersection Observer API.

An emotionally charged and technically complex component that uses kinetic animations simulating digital glitches or geometric transformations to dramatically reveal hidden content.

A self-playing image carousel that synchronizes the page’s background with the active slide.

A dual-slider gallery implemented with Swiper.js, featuring a main view synced with a thumbnail carousel via the controller module.

A convenient, fast, and visually pleasing interface for searching and viewing image collections that works seamlessly without page reloads.

A cinematic slider where frame transitions occur via complex vertical sliding of image fragments, accompanied by a smooth custom cursor.

A lively, immersive page where the central element grabs attention with a flip effect, while the background creates a weightless atmosphere with clickable details to explore.

Images drift horizontally at varying speeds and sizes, establishing a tangible sense of depth. Upon user interaction, the scroll accelerates or reverses direction with a satisfyingly elastic, spring-like response.

A seamless image slider featuring an infinite-scroll SVG navigation menu powered by GSAP’s Observer plugin. The interaction logic translates scroll and swipe deltas into timeline progress, utilizing complex snapping algorithms and opacity tweens to create a fluid, kinetic browsing experience that dynamically updates the active index.

This interactive portfolio showcases a masonry-style layout built with two overlapping CSS Grids, where grid-row: span and grid-column: span create the complex pattern. The key interaction is a unique “spotlight” reveal effect on hover, powered by a JavaScript-controlled SVG <clipPath> that dynamically updates the position of a <circle> mask to follow the mouse.

This infinitely scrolling image grid employs an IntersectionObserver with baton-passing observation to dynamically load content from the Pixabay API, creating cards through DOM manipulation as the user scrolls. JavaScript manages the paginated requests while CSS Grid provides responsive layout adaptation, with custom properties enabling seamless dark/light theme switching and clip-path animations.

A ready-made frontend solution for creating a dynamic art gallery or product catalog, leveraging the advanced Swiper library. The focus is on current technical practices, including keyboard navigation and adaptive spacing changes upon screen resize.

An interactive horizontal gallery featuring non-standard click-based navigation on side images. The main feature is Vanilla JS tracking clicks and mousemove to dynamically calculate and apply CSS transformations for centering the selected element.

A dynamic image skew effect in pure Vanilla JS, where the transformation angle directly depends on the page’s scroll velocity, providing unique and responsive visual feedback.

An advanced interactive gallery showcasing the power of GreenSock: it utilizes custom Timelines to manage complex, multi-stage animations and x, y, scale transformations upon clicking the elements.

A high-performance 3D gallery leveraging WebGL for rendering an interactive image grid with a reflective (shader) effect and realistic cursor-driven lighting, implemented atop LUME.

A demo of smooth “smart” zoom for a gallery, leveraging CSS Properties and Houdini to interpolate custom variables for transformation and accurately calculate the zoom factor.

A high-performance interface that uses TweenMax (part of GSAP) to apply micro-interactions (smooth parallax on titles and images on hover) and create a dramatic “fly-out” effect using Power3.easeIn during the state transition.

Explore a dual-interaction card where a 3D parallax responds to mouse movement, while a click triggers a “camera flash” and a comic-style text reveal. The hover effect uses throttled JS for performance, and the click animations are powered by GSAP.

A demonstration of how GSAP Flip achieves flawless element repositioning: the layout switch is done by simply adding/removing a CSS class, while all complex transition logic (position, size) is delegated to the library.

A demo of a vertical section-snapping gallery with fixed content, utilizing GSAP ScrollTrigger and Lenis for smooth scroll control. The core feature is ClipPath and SplitText-driven background and title transition logic between slides.

An advanced gallery UX pattern where view switching (List/Grid) uses GSAP Flip for calculating and executing complex transitions, and the hover preview effect is controlled by precise mouse events with debounce logic.

A stunning 3D gallery built with Three.js, where images come to life on hover. This demo showcases a custom GLSL shader for a unique “liquid” animation effect and integrates Fancybox for full-screen viewing.

A stunning JavaScript and CSS 3D gallery with images placed on a sphere. Fluid transitions and inertia create a realistic tactile feel, while click-to-zoom provides an impressive focus on the selected content.

The demo showcases the synergy of pure JS and CSS3 transitions to create a responsive gallery. JavaScript handles the navigation logic and dynamic scroll speed calculation, while smooth element transformations and animations are achieved purely with CSS.

A dynamic CSS Grid gallery featuring SVG squircle masking and advanced animations via the @starting-style property. This snippet showcases a responsive layout with sophisticated transition effects using the linear() easing function, providing a high-end frontend UI solution with optimal performance.

An advanced gallery with a carousel based on the native <dialog> element and Scroll-Driven Animations, where the View Transitions API synchronizes the modal opening with the carousel scroll to the selected image, delivering a smooth and functional UX.

An advanced lightbox implementation using a Web Component and the native <dialog> element, where the smooth image transition between thumbnail and fullscreen is powered by the View Transitions API.

A demo showcasing smooth gallery state transitions using the modern View Transitions API, which dynamically assigns viewTransitionName and includes a fallback for non-supporting browsers, ensuring clean DOM updates.