Re: [csswg-drafts] [animation-triggers-1] Should play-forwards and play-backwards have no effect if the animation has already reached its end? (#13643)

> If you want a restarting animation, you can use play

I thought `play` is the same only doesn't sets `playbackRate`. That's what the spec currently says.

> I thought the reason we added play-forwards and play-backwards was for somewhat stateful non-restarting animations.

I think you're right. But it's not clear in the spec now. We should be more specific, like `play(rewind=false)` etc.
And I think we're still using it for the stateful triggers with non-restarting behavior, but it's the state that's imposing the non-restarting behavior, not the action.

> If we agree that play direction specific restarting play behavior is the common use case then i'm fine with keeping it as is.

The fact that we used `play()` kind of implied we use the `play(rewind=true)` behavior of WAAPI. I'm also fine with reversing the behavior of `rewind`, but then, what is the difference between these two:

```css
.once {
  animation-trigger: --a play-once;
}

.forward {
  animation-trigger: --a play-forwards;
}
```

Don't they end up doing the same? Maybe it's not a problem?

> It would be helpful to have real examples where these actions are being used. 

Either we come up with real examples, or we simply try again to map all the options, and see that we have an API surface that covers them, right?

-- 
GitHub Notification of comment by ydaniv
Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/13643#issuecomment-4121280089 using your GitHub account


-- 
Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config

Received on Tuesday, 24 March 2026 20:51:03 UTC