Springs and bounces in native CSS

273 pointsposted 3 months ago
by feross

44 Comments

madethemcry

3 months ago

That gives me a quite literal flashback.

Back in the Macromedia Flash 5 days (25 years ago!), Robert Penner popularized the easing concept. I can't imagine the void we had before that. I clearly remember me starring at the formulas in ActionScript 1.0 (see [1]) without any chance of understanding them - but usage was clear, easy and fun!

Those formulas basically generated the required tweening numbers mathematical (comparable to the Bezier approach mentioned in the article). That's a much different concept to the linear interpolation described in the linked blog article where you pass in a static list of numbers. The more complex your curve the more numbers you need. That's when the author links to the external tool "Linear() Easing Generator" by Jake Archibald and Adam Argyle. It was a fresh and nice reading even though animations are less a topic for me then it was back with Flash.

Here an example of an easing function from the linked source file. The tween executing function would pass in time (t) and other parameters I can't name to calculate the resulting value continuously.

  Math.easeInOutBack = function (t, b, c, d, s) {
      if (s == undefined) s = 1.70158; 
      if ((t/=d/2) < 1) return c/2*(t*t*(((s*=(1.525))+1)*t - s)) + b;
      return c/2*((t-=2)*t*(((s*=(1.525))+1)*t + s) + 2) + b;
  };
If you want to dig deeper, visit roberpenner's easing overview [2] with some resources. Surprisingly all of those links are still working.

[1] https://robertpenner.com/easing/penner_easing_as1.txt [2] https://robertpenner.com/easing/

Theodores

3 months ago

"Marge, I'm pulling an all-nighter for my little girl. Put on a pot of coffee! Drink it, and start making burgers"

I love articles like this one, that inspire me to want to get coding as if it was the most exciting thing to do in the world.

I did subscribe to the newsletter, I bookmarked the page, and I am going back right now to see what else there is to learn from the website. Some of it is in the details, if you subscribe, then you get a sound played. For the last two decades or so, playing sounds without asking the user has been strictly forbidden, but here the rules are known and broken, which I like, as it means I can experiment with this myself and stop being so boring.

xnavra50

3 months ago

Btw: the design of the webpage with all the animations and beautifully crafted info-boxes is top-notch.

rossant

3 months ago

Agreed. And wow, try to turn dark/light theme on and off (hint: speakers on).

broof

3 months ago

His stuff is so incredibly high quality. Really stands out in an AI slop filled internet

SweetSoftPillow

3 months ago

I've encountered a strange bug (using Chrome for Android). When I have this CSS demo page open and scroll about halfway down, the volume of my background audio (e.g., a Twitch App stream) drops by about 50%. Closing the tab immediately restores the audio to its normal volume. I can reproduce this issue consistently. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this behavior?

Edit: it seems it's caused by autoplay of Easing Wizard's video.

_greim_

3 months ago

Since the goal is to create an illusion of real physics, I wonder when they'll just cut to the chase and start using actual physics engines.

Reason I mention it is neither this nor bezier curves deal with the target changing mid-animation very well. CSS just starts over from the current position, which breaks the illusion. A physics engine would maintain the illusion, and could be simpler to specify:

    transition: physics(system=gravity, force=10, bounce=on, dampening=3)
    transition: physics(system=spring, force=5, bounce=off, dampening=5)

tshaddox

3 months ago

The article mentions spring animations, which is essentially a basic physics simulation. They’re very commonly used in higher level JavaScript animation frameworks, but not supported in native CSS.

petralithic

3 months ago

Both paragraphs are addressed in the article.

user

3 months ago

[deleted]

spankalee

3 months ago

I wish CSS had two related things

- A function similar to linear() that supports control points so we can make multi-point Bezier paths.

- calc() support as an easing function so you could combine sin(), etc., and do oscillation with damping.

- A spring() function that remembers the current velocity for when parameters change.

magicalhippo

3 months ago

I'm not a web guy. Why would you want that in CSS when you have Javascript?

mminer237

3 months ago

Off the top of my head:

* It's easier to write without pulling in dependencies.

* Being simpler syntax means smaller page sizes.

* In theory, CSS animations can be faster.

* You don't have to worry about attaching listeners to dynamic content.

* Styling with JS violates Separation of Concerns.

* `prefers-reduced-motion` is only available in CSS, so JS has to run a CSS query anyway.

Sesse__

3 months ago

CSS animations run in the compositor thread, so they are isolated from jank due to concurrently running JS.

user

3 months ago

[deleted]

paulhebert

3 months ago

JS tends to be slower to load, parse and run than CSS.

Additionally, animations are often tightly linked to your page styles which are set in CSS. It’s easier to reason about them if they’re all in the same file and language instead of split across CSS and JS.

SweetSoftPillow

3 months ago

For performance reasons we always prefer HTML, then CSS, and only then JS as a last resort.

alt187

3 months ago

Another argument, this time for performance: JavaScript is single-threaded, so while you wait for your hyper-detailed spring animation to play out, the JS engine does literally nothing else.

tkiolp4

3 months ago

Nice website. I got the newsletter popup, but it was cute, not annoying like they usually are.

maybewhenthesun

3 months ago

a revisit of the <blink> tag :-P

The article is nice. The website is very nicely done. It's interesting in a 'because you can' sort of way.

But I shudder when I imagine a web where all page elements move with bouncyness.

edit: which is not to say you should never use it of course. Even the <blink> had some uses.

jasonjmcghee

3 months ago

I really wanted to change the easing curves. They are interactive, but not modifiable. If you're reading this @joshwcomeau - i would play with the curves if you made them modifiable lol

nine_k

3 months ago

There is a modifiable curve after many fixed-shape examples. It's not easy to come up with something that feels realistic though!

culebron21

3 months ago

Why do we need, essentially checkboxes, to have a whole simulation? How many people would even notice the switches have a transition at all?

I was fascinated with building websites ~25 years ago, but looking back, we were doing just printing press on screens -- e.g. the obsession with text-align:justify, and some people not satisfied with that, made punctuation marks stick out. All that "rubber" <div>s insanity... and now this: every little flip switch needs a whole animation process. Who will care if they have no transitions whatsoever?

jdthedisciple

3 months ago

Counterpoint:

A smoothly animated switch is calming to our vegetative nervous system resulting in reduced systemic bodily inflammation, thereby facilitating healing from almost any health condition imaginable.

Bit like a wholesome, warm asparagus soup before bed.

afandian

3 months ago

It's like we never learn from history.

Remember "The Grouch" Mac OS extension, and the parents who found that their children had deleted precious files because they enjoyed the little song?

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/The_Grouch

watersb

3 months ago

On a Mac IIci with a reasonable amount of RAM, I has users run out of System memory when the "Grouch" extension was loaded. The audio was uncompressed PCM, and it took about 200KB.

It was a nice tech support call, in the sense that removing the extension fixed all the weird crashes and reboots.

But some folks were really sad to let the Grouch go..

JodieBenitez

3 months ago

There are people like him. And then there are people like me, looking for the option in my window manager not to draw the content when a window is moved.

srean

3 months ago

Two of a kind then. This would be the first thing I would set in my fvwm window manager.

lerp-io

3 months ago

once u mess with it enough u will realize that u need physics math that relies on a function that uses the previous state to interpolate between different states. u can use great libraries such as https://motion.dev/ for this

dyauspitr

3 months ago

CSS is so stupid, this stuff was so easy with Flash. Just look at this mess.

user

3 months ago

[deleted]

afandian

3 months ago

These are fun decorations. Maybe there's a practical benefit. But please, if someone has set 'prefer reduced motion' then just don't animate anything.

pwdisswordfishy

3 months ago

Why is it even something that websites have to explicitly design for?

Browsers should just refuse to honor any animation declarations when the preference is enabled, with websites none the wiser.

muspimerol

3 months ago

Good thing that's exactly what the article suggests!

afandian

3 months ago

I wasn't clear from the article if it was entirely disabled. It says:

> Like with all animations, we should make sure to respect user motion preferences.

I'm out of date with modern CSS, so I wasn't sure from the syntax if the code snippet out-and-out prevented it, or just reduced it.

slig

3 months ago

I'm doing his latest course on whimsical animations. So. Freaking. Good.

rosslh

3 months ago

Yet another banger from Josh Comeau. Dude does not miss!

dmitrygr

3 months ago

> There is an open proposal(opens in new tab) to add a spring() timing function to CSS. Unlike linear(), this would actually be a true spring physics implementation! It wouldn’t have any of the limitations we’ve discussed here.

Uh huh... How long till a proper implementation of CSS requires a proper emulator of relativistic physics and quantum effects? Have we learned nothing from modern browsers already becoming de-facto poorly-specced and poorer-yet implemented JS-based operating systems / malware delivery vehicles?

tshaddox

3 months ago

It’s just spring physics, hardly a slippery slope to a Newtonian physics engine let alone a relativistic or quantum physics engine. I wouldn’t describe the math as significantly more complex than Bézier curves.

dmitrygr

3 months ago

Every thing you add is another step away from making building another browser engine a possibility.

alt187

3 months ago

I'm not absolutely certain the spring() function would be in the top 1500 of things that are hard to implement in a grassroots browser engine.

tshaddox

3 months ago

Indeed. I suspect that generally the older a web feature is, the more difficult it would be for a new browser lot implement.

dmitrygr

3 months ago

The point I’m making is about the number of features. Even if every single one is simple, when most websites require a different subset, to be a viable browser, you have to implement them all so growing the number increases the difficulty of implementing a viable browser.

afavour

3 months ago

It’s a timing function.