Exactly this, why the "pure" label when obviously not? The main reason for me to click through to this thing was exactly that; I love seeing people push an individual tech like CSS on its own: there's nothing tech-wise news worthy in oldschool js/css solution like this.

I don't think that level of cynicism is warranted: the individual mice are, in fact, styled via pure CSS. The small amount of JavaScript that's used is a convenience method to toggle which mouse is visible[1], and the work that was done here does not change in any substantive manner without it. If all the mice were displayed simultaneously side-by-side it'd be equally impressive.

[1]: http://codepen.io/joshbader/pen/fKjra

> If all the mice were displayed simultaneously side-by-side it'd be equally impressive.

Then that should be what happens when javascript is disabled.

Why?

I'd wager most of us are happy with the concept that it's being presented on CodePen with a bit of helper JS so that the target audience (developers who are unlikely to disable JS, or are happy to enable it for a site like CodePen) can better appreciate the demo.