RE: [css3-animations] Effect of display:none and visibility:hidden on animations

I get the part about wrapping the animations into a display:none parent (though, again, this doesn't address the perfectly reasonable use-case where you want the initial state of the animation to be visible).

Your proposal suggests to me that we're missing an animation API. Authors shouldn't have to monkey around with display and create display:none frames for the purpose of achieving synchronization. To be more specific, I would like scenarios like these to be addressed as part of proposals such as Dean's here http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Apr/0058.html.

From: Rik Cabanier [mailto:cabanier@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 4:35 PM
To: Sylvain Galineau
Cc: www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: [css3-animations] Effect of display:none and visibility:hidden on animations

I've posted about this before on the forum. See: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Mar/0624.html

Basically, if you have to rely on JavaScript to trigger animations, it becomes impossible to keep everything in sync because the clock keeps on ticking while your script run.
The more complicated or faster-switching your animations are. the worse this problem will become.
Having support for 'display' in the keyframes structure would do away with scripting.
ie the css+html for a simple animation with 3 true keyframes would look like:

@keyframes KF_1 {
from{ display: block;}
33%{ display: none;}
}
.k1{
animation-name: KF_1;
display: none;
}

@keyframes KF_2 {
33%{ display: block;}
66%{ display: none;}
}
.k2{
animation-name: KF_2;
display: none;
}

@keyframes KF_3 {
66%{ display: block;}
to{ display: none;}
}
.k3{
animation-name: KF_3;
display: none;
}

html:
<div style="display:none">
<img class="k1" src="frame1.svg">
<img class="k2" src="frame2.svg">
<img class="k3" src="frame3.svg">
</div>

If you now make the outer div visible, the animation will run.
The idiom will also extend if you have nested animations.

My original email also proposes to add pseudo selectors to the keyframe structure. This is just to make the notation easier and make the size of the CSS smaller.
With pseudo selectors, the example above could be described with 1 keyframe structure and 1 style.

Rik
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 3:22 PM, Sylvain Galineau <sylvaing@microsoft.com<mailto:sylvaing@microsoft.com>> wrote:
I would expect the animation-play-state to be the property for this behavior as I do not think it is safe to assume that an initially suspended animation will always also be invisible.

With this caveat, I don't get how or why allowing display:none in @keyframes enables synchronization ?

From: Rik Cabanier [mailto:cabanier@gmail.com<mailto:cabanier@gmail.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 11:56 AM
To: Sylvain Galineau
Cc: www-style@w3.org<mailto:www-style@w3.org>
Subject: Re: [css3-animations] Effect of display:none and visibility:hidden on animations

I think WebKit's behavior is more useful since it lets you predefine an animation (with potentially nested animations) and then trigger it with 1 state change.

This is also why it would be very useful if 'display' was allowed in the keyframes structure. It would allow users to construct intricate animations that would stay in sync with each other.

Rik
On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Sylvain Galineau <sylvaing@microsoft.com<mailto:sylvaing@microsoft.com>> wrote:
The specification does not define what should happen for visibility:hidden or display:none. In the former case, one expects the animation to run and have the normal layout impact of a visibility:hidden element. This is the case in Webkit and Gecko.

There does not seem to be agreement for display:none yet; WebKit does not run the animation and applying display:none resets the animation. But getComputedStyle() indicates Gecko animates the specified properties when display is none.

WebKit's behavior is certainly performance-friendly; Gecko's is what I would expect though i.e. if my 2mn animation was script-based and the element had display:none for the first minute, setting display:block at the 61st second would reflect the state of the element at that point in the animation's timeline.

Thoughts ?