Re: [css3-transitions] Simplification

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2009, at 5:50 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>> In my personal opinion (disclaimer: I am an author that uses almost no
>> js-based transitions currently, but am planning to do so somewhat more
>> frequently in the future), this would be acceptable.  It would make
>> CSS-based transitions absolutely trivial while still addressing the
>> majority of use-cases, and modern js libraries make the rest of the
>> use-cases kk!.
>
> The basic case of applying a transition is equally trivial. It is important
> to accomodate author hand-tuning without having to escape to JavaScript.
> JS-driven animations are not amenable to hardware acceleration, and are
> likely to consume more CPU and more battery life on mobile devices. It's
> important to have a design for transitions that can work well across a range
> of devices. Furthermore, if CSS provides for transitions at all, it should
> try to be reasonably complete and not force the use of scripts solely for
> presentational effects. Scripting should be left to cases where actual
> behavior or application logic must be implemented.

Makes sense.  As I noted, I do *not* have any substantive experience
with animations.  If actual experience shows that the current level of
detail is roughly the minimum needed to achieve an attractive
transition, so be it.  I just want my own authoring to be as simple as
possible, but no more, to steal a phrase from Einstein.

>> This proposal is also compatible with gradual
>> enhancement - a bare-bones browser will simply ignore the transition
>> and change immediately, a CSS-transition-enabled browser will perform
>> the UA-specific transition, and a JS-enabled browser can allow a JS
>> library to shut off the transition and implement its own.
>
> This is already possible with the current design. Browsers that don't
> support CSS Transitions will simply transition immediately. In addition,
> there are even JS libraries that will parse the CSS Transitions syntax and
> perform a script-driven version of the transition on browsers that do not
> support CSS Transitions natively.

Oh, indeed, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.  I was just noting that
even this simplified proposal is compatible.

As for the js libraries adding support for transitions automatically,
I love the people who design those things.  ^_^

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 19 February 2009 19:31:21 UTC