Choose Your Animation Adventure Val Head • @vlh Author of Designing Interface Animation Design Advocate, Adobe

You have encountered an interface that requires animation. What would you like to use? (1) CSS? (2) JavaScript? (3) SVG? (4) …?

CSS Key Frames Transitions

What CSS is great at: • Well-defined state transitions • Loading animations, looping animations • Animations on :hover, :focus and similar CSS

Pros: • No external library needed • Great potential for performance without much e ! ort • Keyframes are reusable
• Can adjust properties in media queries for responsive animation when needed CSS

Cons: • Access to limited events • Defined entirely ahead of time • Can’t separate transform properties* CSS

CSS + JS

!

CSS In Summary Where it shines: • Animated interactions with defined states • Simple interactive animations Biggest Pro: • Nearly e ! ortless performance • No additional requests

CSS is pretty great, but it might be 
 time to move to JavaScript if: • You’ll be chaining more than 3-ish animations in a sequence • The animation needs to change dynamically at runtime • Need to animate transform properties separately
• Physics or other complex easing structures are required

Vanilla Canvas Web GL react Libs Web Animation API JS

What javascript is great at: JS • Complex animated interactions • Narrative or immersive animation • Dynamic state transitions

requestAnimationFrame

Vanilla JS - requestAnimationFrame JS const moveCat = () !” { … currentValue = changeInValue * progress + startValue 
 cat.style.transform = translate3d(${currentValue}px, 0, 0)
… requestAnimationFrame(moveCat); } moveCat();

Vanilla JS - requestAnimationFrame JS const moveCat = () !” { … currentValue = changeInValue * progress + startValue 
 cat.style.transform = translate3d(${currentValue}px, 0, 0)
… requestAnimationFrame(moveCat); } moveCat();

Vanilla JS - requestAnimationFrame JS const moveCat = () !” { … currentValue = changeInValue * progress + startValue 


cat.style.transform = translate3d(${currentValue}px, 0, 0)
… requestAnimationFrame(moveCat); } moveCat();

Vanilla JS - requestAnimationFrame JS const moveCat = () !” { … currentValue = changeInValue * progress + startValue 
 cat.style.transform = translate3d(${currentValue}px, 0, 0)
… requestAnimationFrame(moveCat); } moveCat();

JS animation libraries

Comparing JavaScript animation libraries…

TweenMax.to( box , 1 , 
 { opacity:1, x:800 , ease:Power2.easeIn } 
 ); Velocity( box , 
 { opacity: 1, translateX:”+=800 “}, 
 { duration: 1000 , easing:”easeInQuad” }); anime({ targets: box ,

opacity:1, translateX: 800, 


duration: 1000,

easing: ‘easeInQuad’ 
 });

~9 - 29kb ~14.4kb ~4.7kb back to IE8* back to IE8 back to IE10 Docs + forums Docs + SO Docs drawSVG, morphSVG, Draggable drop-in replacement for jQuery very lightweight Some features and licensing 
 requires $ MIT license MIT license *These are not the only JS animation libraries out there.

JavaScript In Summary Where it shines: • Complex UI animation • Animation with dynamic states • Immersive animation Biggest Pro: • Lots of options for how to get it done • Can animate DOM, SVG, canvas

SVG

What SVG is great at: SVG • Animated illustrations
• Animated icons • Infographics and dataviz • Fluidly scaling, responsive animation

SMIL •

Tag-based animation within SVG • No IE or Edge support • Future in Chrome uncertain “

$ CSS • Transitions and keyframe animations can be applied to SVG elements • Limited number of properties are exposed to CSS • Transforms on child elements not supported in IE* JS • Can access/animate native SVG properties • Can do motion along path, shape morphing and more just like SMIL

airbnb.design/lottie/

lottiefiles.com

github.com/airbnb/lottie-web

SVG In Summary Where it shines: • Animated illustrations & infographics • Shape morphing • Motion along a path Biggest Pro: • Responsive by nature • Potential for tiny file sizes

PERFORMANCE

size

• transform: scale() position
• transform: translate() rotation
• transform: rotate() opacity

composite paint layout style

CSS JavaScript • CSS is declarative 
 (whole animation is known ahead of time) • CSS animations with transform & opacity won’t be impacted by the main thread • JS is imperative 
 (browser only really aware of the current frame) • Hardware acceleration isn’t automatic

SVG & Hardware Acceleration? • Not all browsers support it
• Good performance in general without it though

You have encountered an interface that requires animation. What would you like to use? (1) …?

Designing Interface Animation designinginterfaceanimation.com 20% O ! : “valhead”