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Nathan Upchurch
2025-11-10 20:01:42 -06:00
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---
title: "Let it Snow: Adding a Falling-Snow Effect to Your Eleventy Website"
description: As you can see, I'm getting my priorities in order. Here's how I added a falling-snow effect to my website.
date: 2025-11-10
tags:
- Site Updates
- Eleventy
synopsis: As you can see, I'm getting my priorities in order. Here's how I added a falling-snow effect to my website.
mastodon_id: "115528575840719665"
---
I'm pretty happy with the look and feel of my website but, looking around the indieweb, I see so many creative and fun websites with neat animations and interactive features. Reader, I was jealous; I wanted my website to be more fun. The [flying toasters](/special/flying-toasters) just weren't enough anymore. My first thought was to add a midi-player. I spent a few hours in a hyperfocus-hole digging up all sorts of fun midi tracks, from Kate Bush to Rammstein. I was *excited.* But reality hit me like a truck when I learned that HTML5 dropped support for midi files. This meant that it was either going to be a monumental pain in the arse to implement my midi payer, or I was going to have to rely on some pretty heavy [dependencies](https://github.com/cifkao/html-midi-player?tab=readme-ov-file#installing-from-npm). And look, I know typing `npm install blah` doesn't seem like a big deal to some folk but, where I can, I would really rather avoid summoning from the ether giant directories full of code that I don't understand for my little website. To add to that, provided you don't want your midi files played by some dead-simple synth sound, there's the business of soundfonts: gigabytes of audio samples from mysterious origins which you have to host yourself if you don't want [Google's servers](https://github.com/cifkao/html-midi-player?tab=readme-ov-file#soundfonts) tracking all of your visitors. At least one popular soundfont also seems to be a bit of a mystery; where does SGM Plus come from? No one seems to know. How is it licensed? I sure couldn't find an answer.
So, yea, I gave up on that idea and decided to implement a falling-snow effect instead. Here's how I did it.
## Humble beginnings
I set out to look for an implementation with as little JavaScript as possible. I have nothing against JavaScript, but I figure it's best to try trimming your toenails with clippers before reaching for a chainsaw. The search led me to a codepen with [this HTML and CSS-only solution](https://codepen.io/codeconvey/pen/xRzQay). I tidied up the formatting, stripped out anything unnecessary, and put together my include, `_includes/weather.njk`:
{% raw %}
``` html
<!-- weather -->
<!-- Based on https://codepen.io/codeconvey/pen/xRzQay -->
{# This include causes a symbol (text, emoji, et cetera; from metadata.weatherSymbol) to fall from the top of the viewport like snow. #}
<style>
.fallingObject {
color: #fff;
font-size: 1em;
font-family: Arial;
pointer-events: none;
text-shadow: 0 0 1px #000;
}
@keyframes fallingObjects-fall {
0% {
top: -10%;
}
100% {
top: 100%;
}
}
@keyframes fallingObjects-shake {
0% {
transform: translateX(0px);
}
50% {
transform: translateX(80px);
}
100% {
transform: translateX(0px);
}
}
.fallingObject {
position: fixed;
top: -10%;
z-index: 9999;
user-select: none;
cursor: default;
animation-name: fallingObjects-fall, fallingObjects-shake;
animation-duration: 10s, 3s;
animation-timing-function: linear, ease-in-out;
animation-iteration-count: infinite, infinite;
animation-play-state: running, running;
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(0) {
left: 1%;
animation-delay: 0s, 0s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(45deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(1) {
left: 10%;
animation-delay: 1s, 1s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(10deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(2) {
left: 20%;
animation-delay: 6s, 0.5s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(60deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(3) {
left: 30%;
animation-delay: 4s, 2s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(84deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(4) {
left: 40%;
animation-delay: 2s, 2s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(267deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(5) {
left: 50%;
animation-delay: 8s, 3s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(200deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(6) {
left: 60%;
animation-delay: 6s, 2s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(20deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(7) {
left: 70%;
animation-delay: 2.5s, 1s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(78deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(8) {
left: 80%;
animation-delay: 1s, 0s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(3120deg);
}
}
.fallingObject:nth-of-type(9) {
left: 90%;
animation-delay: 3s, 1.5s;
& > div {
transform: rotate(123deg);
}
}
</style>
<div class="fallingObjects" id="weather" aria-hidden="true">
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
<div class="fallingObject">
<div>{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- /weather -->
```
{% endraw %}
I added this include in my base layout, after the footer, just before the the closing `</body>` tag. Beyond cleanup, I made the following changes:
* I replaced the snowflakes in the example with {% raw %}`{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}`{% endraw %} so that I can easily change the symbol that falls (that's right folks, this'll do more than just snowflakes!).
* I added a random amount of rotation to each object.
* I changed the class names from anything snowflake related because I'm a pedant.
Now all we need to do is make sure {% raw %}`{{ metadata.weatherSymbol }}`{% endraw %} exists and we should be cooking with gas. To `_data/metadata.js` I added: `weatherSymbol: "🍁",`; a falling leaf for autumn.
## Settings
Now we have our ~~falling-snow~~ falling leaf effect working but, as with anything fun, there are going to be at least a few crabbit souls who are going to hate this. For them, let's implement a toggle. First, the toggle itself, in `_includes/weatherController.njk`:
``` html
<form id="weatherController">
<input type="checkbox" id="weatherToggle" checked />
<label for="weatherToggle">Show weather?</label>
</form>
```
Second, a settings modal to hold the toggle, in `_includes/siteSettings.njk` (if the feature happens to be turned on at the moment you should be able to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see this in action):
{% raw %}
``` html
<div id="siteSettingsContainer">
<button onclick="siteSettings.showModal();">Site Settings</button>
<dialog id="siteSettings">
<h2>Site Settings</h2>
{% include "weatherController.njk" %}
<button id="settingsDone" onclick="siteSettings.close();">Done</button>
</dialog>
</div>
```
{% endraw %}
Alright, now we just need to pop our site settings include into the site footer and wire everything up together.
## Wiring it all up
Let's first add a quick rule to our CSS:
``` CSS
.hidden {
display: none;
}
```
Then we can work on our script. Let's add it to the bottom of our weather include, `_includes/weather.njk`, as it's positioned right before the closing `</body>` tag.
First, we'll check local storage to see if the user has set a preference before; if so, we'll add/remove our `.hidden` CSS rule to our weather element and update the weather-controller checkbox accordingly:
``` javascript
<script>
const weather = document.getElementById("weather");
const weatherToggle = document.getElementById("weatherToggle");
const weatherPreference = localStorage.getItem("weather");
// Initial weather preference check on page load
if (weatherPreference == 0) {
weather.classList.add("hidden");
weatherToggle.checked = false;
} else {
weather.classList.remove("hidden");
weatherToggle.checked = true;
};
```
Then, we'll create an event listener on the checkbox, which will add a value into local storage to save our visitor's preference and add/remove that CSS rule whenever a change to the checkbox value is detected:
``` javascript
// Handle weather setting toggle
weatherToggle.addEventListener('change', function() {
if (this.checked) {
localStorage.setItem("weather", 1);
weather.classList.remove("hidden");
} else {
localStorage.setItem("weather", 0);
weather.classList.add("hidden");
};
});
</script>
```
## Done!
With that, we're done! We now have a "falling-snow" effect that can take any emoji (or arbitrary text) set in `_data/metadata.js`, and can be toggled on and off by the visitor whose preference is retained in local storage across sessions.