Parallax Effect in Vue.js

As a frontend developer you often need to create different kind of interactions and animations, such as parallax: an effect that makes a background image scroll slower so it gives the illusion that it is deeper in the screen.

We’ve already shown you how you can do it using plain CSS, but if you don’t want to go that path and you’re using Vue.js for your app, it can be simpler.

That’s where vue-parallaxy comes into play by giving you a component that takes care of the parallax effect for you.

Simple Demo

First of all, you need to install vue-parallaxy by running the following command:

$ npm install vue-parallaxy

# or, using Yarn
$ yard add vue-parallaxy

Since vue-parallaxy is a component, you need to import it where you need it, just as any other component:

import Parallax from "vue-parallaxy";

export default {
  components: {
    Parallax
  }
};

Finally, you just need to pass an image to the component:

<parallax>
  <img src="https://images.pexels.com/photos/132037/pexels-photo-132037.jpeg">
</parallax>

Since it works by using slots, you can also pass a <picture> element or an image with src-set attributes.

Options

vue-parallaxy gives you different options to customize its behavior which you can pass via props.

The speedFactor is a factor value that determines how aggressive the effect is. Its range is from 0 (no parallax) to 1 (most aggressive), 0.15 being the default:

<parallax :speed-factor="0.3">
  <img src="https://images.pexels.com/photos/132037/pexels-photo-132037.jpeg">
</parallax>

An interesting fact is that by default the parallax effect is disabled on mobile. That’s determined by a breakpoint property that defaults to (min-width: 968px), so if you want to make it work on smaller screens, you can set it to a smaller value:

<parallax :speed-factor="0.3" breakpoint="(min-width: 80px)">
  <img src="https://images.pexels.com/photos/132037/pexels-photo-132037.jpeg">
</parallax>

You can see the full props API in the documentation.

Wrapping Up

You’ve seen how to create parallax effects in a Vue application using vue-parallaxy and some examples for customizing its behavior.

Additionally, you can see the code and a demo for this article in this codesandbox.