Re: Apple's Proposal for CSS Animation

On Nov 7, 2007, at 2:14 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:

> I do not think that the proposal is the least complex solution to  
> what-
> ever problem it attempts to solve (and the point of the question  
> was to
> find out what the precise problem is), and I didn't propose any  
> specific
> alternative and you did not offer a definition for complex and simple,
> so I can't really answer that.

I do not represent Apple or Webkit, but I think that the idea is for  
the HTML to remain unsullied, and that the "special effects" of what  
how the page renders, including how it renders over time, belong  
naturally in the CSS, since it is the role of CSS to separate  
presentational design aspects from the structural and semantic HTML.

The Webkit blog at <http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/> gives  
good examples for how the transitions can be used, and they all seem  
fairly simple to author. I have a nightly download of Webkit, where  
the examples render beautifully. I welcome the ability to have an  
HTML element fade/slide/zoom/wipe in or out by simply adding another  
style sheet rule to my CSS, or a couple lines of JavaScript that  
change the the style in response to other events (like "click").

The full blown animation seems a little less compelling to me (and  
the cubic bezier curve for the transition-timing-function seems like  
overkill), but I guess it is nice to have it there if I wanted to do  
something more complex. The fact that it has a syntax that is similar  
to the more useful and easy-to-implement transitions speaks in its  
favor. I would likely learn and be familiar with transitions before I  
tried to tackle a more complex animation, so the similarity of CSS  
animation to CSS transitions would make it a preferable way to  
accomplish a somewhat more complex goal.

No Flash object to create and embed or special non-semantic HTML  
structures to add to the HTML. The HTML remains the same regardless  
of browser support for the additional presentational CSS. Sounds good  
to me.

Received on Thursday, 8 November 2007 17:34:36 UTC