Creating a Clock with the New CSS sin() and cos() Trigonometry Functions

"We will build good ships here — at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships."

CSS trigonometry functions are here! Well, they are if you’re using the latest versions of Firefox and Safari, that is. Having this sort of mathematical power in CSS opens up a whole bunch of possibilities. In this tutorial, I thought we’d dip our toes in the water to get a feel for a couple of the newer functions: sin() and cos().

There are other trigonometry functions in the pipeline — including tan() — so why focus just on sin() and cos()? They happen to be perfect for the idea I have in mind, which is to place text along the edge of a circle. That’s been covered here on CSS-Tricks when Chris shared an approach that uses a Sass mixin. That was six years ago, so let’s give it the bleeding edge treatment.

Here’s what I have in mind. Again, it’s only supported in Firefox and Safari at the moment:

CSS trigonometry functions are here! Well, they are if you’re using the latest versions of Firefox and Safari, that is. Having this sort of mathematical power in CSS opens up a whole bunch of possibilities. In this tutorial, I thought we’d dip our toes in the water to get a feel for a couple of the newer functions: sin() and cos().

There are other trigonometry functions in the pipeline — including tan() — so why focus just on sin() and cos()? They happen to be perfect for the idea I have in mind, which is to place text along the edge of a circle. That’s been covered here on CSS-Tricks when Chris shared an approach that uses a Sass mixin. That was six years ago, so let’s give it the bleeding edge treatment.

Here’s what I have in mind. Again, it’s only supported in Firefox and Safari at the moment: