Re: Paged UIs a la Mobile Navigation

Yehuda Katz
(ph) 718.877.1325


On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 3:51 PM, Robert O'Callahan <robert@ocallahan.org>wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:22 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Yehuda then provided some extra detail about why it's difficult
>> or impossible to performantly/attractively do this UI with the
>> existing primitives that CSS exposes - you don't want to trigger
>> hardware acceleration on normal scrolling,
>
>
> Why wouldn't you want the browser to hardware-accelerate normal scrolling
> if that was beneficial?
>
> but you *do* on sideways
>> translations (the "page flips"), and switching between hw-acc or not
>> produces a visible flicker.
>>
>
> Surely that's just a browser bug?
>

In general, the problem is that hardware acceleration has a very clear and
important user-facing effect, but is extremely clumsy to work with, to the
point of being impossible to emulate certain common UI paradigms. We could
say that we should go around to the browsers, help them identify these
"bugs" (which they often don't agree are bugs to begin with, just
tradeoffs), and make sure there are no regressions forever even though
nothing requires the particular desired behavior, or we can figure out a
way to describe what we want in CSS (or JavaScript), which will make it
clear to the browsers what the desired effects are.

Do you have ideas for new primitives that could achieve the desired
effects, or a way to add clarity to existing primitives that would make the
performance characteristics clear?


> Rob
> --
> "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not
> in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us
> our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not
> sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us." [1 John
> 1:8-10]
>