html - How to Make A Chevron Arrow Using CSS?

Question

Ok, so everyone knows you can make a triangle using this:

#triangle {
    width: 0;
    height: 0;
    border-left: 50px solid transparent;
    border-right: 50px solid transparent;
    border-bottom: 100px solid red;
}

And that produces a solid, filled in triangle. But how would you make a hollow-type arrow-like triangle, like this?

Answer 1

You can use the before or after pseudo-element and apply some CSS to it. There are various ways. You can add both before and after, and rotate and position each of them to form one of the bars. An easier solution is adding two borders to just the before element and rotate it using transform: rotate.

Scroll down for a different solution that uses an actual element instead of the pseuso elements

In this case, I've added the arrows as bullets in a list and used em sizes to make them size properly with the font of the list.

ul {
    list-style: none;
}

ul.big {
    list-style: none;
    font-size: 300%
}

li::before {
    position: relative;
    /* top: 3pt; Uncomment this to lower the icons as requested in comments*/
    content: "";
    display: inline-block;
    /* By using an em scale, the arrows will size with the font */
    width: 0.4em;
    height: 0.4em;
    border-right: 0.2em solid black;
    border-top: 0.2em solid black;
    transform: rotate(45deg);
    margin-right: 0.5em;
}

/* Change color */
li:hover {
  color: red; /* For the text */
}
li:hover::before {
  border-color: red; /* For the arrow (which is a border) */
}

<ul>
    <li>Item1</li>
    <li>Item2</li>
    <li>Item3</li>
    <li>Item4</li>
</ul>

<ul class="big">
    <li>Item1</li>
    <li>Item2</li>
    <li>Item3</li>
    <li>Item4</li>
</ul>