{"rowid": 61, "title": "Animation in Responsive Design", "contents": "Animation and responsive design can sometimes feel like they\u2019re at odds with each other. Animation often needs space to do its thing, but RWD tells us that the amount of space we\u2019ll have available is going to change a lot. Balancing that can lead to some tricky animation situations. \nEmbracing the squishiness of responsive design doesn\u2019t have to mean giving up on your creative animation ideas. There are three general techniques that can help you balance your web animation creativity with your responsive design needs. One or all of these approaches might help you sneak in something just a little extra into your next project.\nFocused art direction\nSmaller viewports mean a smaller stage for your motion to play out on, and this tends to amplify any motion in your animation. Suddenly 100 pixels is really far and multiple moving parts can start looking like they\u2019re battling for space. An effect that looked great on big viewports can become muddled and confusing when it\u2019s reframed in a smaller space.\nMaking animated movements smaller will do the trick for simple motion like a basic move across the screen. But for more complex animation on smaller viewports, you\u2019ll need to simplify and reduce the number of moving parts. The key to this is determining what the vital parts of the animation are, to zone in on the parts that are most important to its message. Then remove the less necessary bits to distill the motion\u2019s message down to the essentials. \nFor example, Rally Interactive\u2019s navigation folds down into place with two triangle shapes unfolding each corner on larger viewports. If this exact motion was just scaled down for narrower spaces the two corners would overlap as they unfolded. It would look unnatural and wouldn\u2019t make much sense. \nOpen video\n\nThe main purpose of this animation is to show an unfolding action. To simplify the animation, Rally unfolds only one side for narrower viewports, with a slightly different animation. The action is still easily interpreted as unfolding and it\u2019s done in a way that is a better fit for the available space. The message the motion was meant to convey has been preserved while the amount of motion was simplified. \nOpen video\n\nSi Digital does something similar. The main concept of the design is to portray the studio as a creative lab. On large viewports, this is accomplished primarily through an animated illustration that runs the full length of the site and triggers its animations based on your scroll position. The illustration is there to support the laboratory concept visually, but it doesn\u2019t contain critical content.\nOpen video\n\nAt first, it looks like Si Digital just turned off the animation of the illustration for smaller viewports. But they\u2019ve actually been a little cleverer than that. They\u2019ve also reduced the complexity of the illustration itself. Both the amount of motion (reduced down to no motion) and the illustration were simplified to create a result that is much easier to glean the concept from.\nOpen video\n\nThe most interesting thing about these two examples is that they\u2019re solved more with thoughtful art direction than complex code. Keeping the main concept of the animations at the forefront allowed each to adapt creative design solutions to viewports of varying size without losing the integrity of their design. \nResponsive choreography\nStatic content gets moved around all the time in responsive design. A three-column layout might line up from left to right on wide viewports, then stack top to bottom on narrower viewports. The same approach can be used to arrange animated content for narrower views, but the animation\u2019s choreography also needs to be adjusted for the new layout. Even with static content, just scaling it down or zooming out to fit it into the available space is rarely an ideal solution. Rearranging your animations\u2019 choreography to change which animation starts when, or even which animations play at all, keeps your animated content readable on smaller viewports. \nIn a recent project I had three small animations that played one after the other, left to right, on wider viewports but needed to be stacked on narrower viewports to be large enough to see. On wide viewports, all three animations could play one right after the other in sequence because all three were in the viewable area at the same time. But once these were stacked for the narrower viewport layouts, that sequence had to change. \nOpen video\n\nWhat was essentially one animation on wider viewports became three separate animations when stacked on narrower viewports. The layout change meant the choreography had to change as well. Each animation starts independently when it comes into view in the stacked layout instead of playing automatically in sequence. (I\u2019ve put the animated parts in this demo if you want to peek under the hood.) \nOpen video\n\nI choose to use the GreenSock library, with the choreography defined in two different timelines for this particular project. But the same goals could be accomplished with other JavaScript options or even CSS keyframe animations and media queries. \nEven more complex responsive choreography can be pulled off with SVG. Media queries can be used to change CSS animations applied to SVG elements at specific breakpoints for starters. For even more responsive power, SVG\u2019s viewBox property, and the positioning of the objects within it, can be adjusted at JavaScript-defined breakpoints. This lets you set rules to crop the viewable area and arrange your animating elements to fit any space. \nSarah Drasner has some great examples of how to use this technique with style in this responsive infographic and this responsive interactive illustration. On the other hand, if smart scalability is what you\u2019re after, it\u2019s also possible to make all of an SVG\u2019s shapes and motion scale with the SVG canvas itself. Sarah covers both these clever responsive SVG techniques in detail. Creative and complex animation can easily become responsive thanks to the power of SVG! \nOpen video\n\nBake performance into your design decisions\nIt\u2019s hard to get very far into a responsive design discussion before performance comes up. Performance goes hand in hand with responsive design and your animation decisions can have a big impact on the overall performance of your site. \nThe translate3D \u201chack\u201d, backface-visibility:hidden, and the will-change property are the heavy hitters of animation performance. But decisions made earlier in your animation design process can have a big impact on rendering performance and your performance budget too.\nPick a technology that matches your needs\nOne of the biggest advantages of the current web animation landscape is the range of tools we have available to us. We can use CSS animations and transitions to add just a dash of interface animation to our work, go all out with webGL to create a 3D experience, or anywhere in between. All within our browsers! Having this huge range of options is amazing and wonderful but it also means you need to be cognizant of what you\u2019re using to get the job done. \nLoading in the full weight of a robust JavaScript animation library is going to be overkill if you\u2019re only animating a few small elements here and there. That extra overhead will have an impact on performance. Performance budgets will not be pleased. \nAlways match the complexity of the technology you choose to the complexity of your animation needs to avoid unnecessary performance strain. For small amounts of animation, stick to CSS solutions since it\u2019s the most lightweight option. As your animations grow in complexity, or start to require more robust logic, move to a JavaScript solution that can accomplish what you need.\nAnimate the most performant properties\nWhether you\u2019re animating in CSS or JavaScript, you\u2019re affecting specific properties of the animated element. Browsers can animate some properties more efficiently than others based on how many steps need to happen behind the scenes to visually update those properties. \nBrowsers are particularly efficient at animating opacity, scale, rotation, and position (when the latter three are done with transforms). This article from Paul Irish and Paul Lewis gives the full scoop on why. Conveniently, those are also the most common properties used in motion design. There aren\u2019t many animated effects that can\u2019t be pulled off with this list. Stick to these properties to set your animations up for the best performance results from the start. If you find yourself needing to animate a property outside of this list, check CSS Triggers\u2026 to find out how much of an additional impact it might have.\nOffset animation start times\nOffsets (the concept of having a series of similar movements execute one slightly after the other, creating a wave-like pattern) are a long-held motion graphics trick for creating more interesting and organic looking motion. Employing this trick of the trade can also be smart for performance. Animating a large number of objects all at the same time can put a strain on the browser\u2019s rendering abilities even in the best cases. Adding short delays to offset these animations in time, so they don\u2019t all start at once, can improve rendering performance. \nGo explore the responsive animation possibilities for yourself!\nWith smart art direction, responsive choreography, and an eye on performance you can create just about any creative web animation you can think up while still being responsive. Keep these in mind for your next project and you\u2019ll pull off your animations with style at any viewport size!", "year": "2015", "author": "Val Head", "author_slug": "valhead", "published": "2015-12-09T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/animation-in-responsive-design/", "topic": "design"}
{"rowid": 76, "title": "Giving CSS Animations and Transitions Their Place", "contents": "CSS animations and transitions may not sit squarely in the realm of the behaviour layer, but they\u2019re stepping up into this area that used to be pure JavaScript territory. Heck, CSS might even perform better than its JavaScript equivalents in some cases. That\u2019s pretty serious! With CSS\u2019s new tricks blurring the lines between presentation and behaviour, it can start to feel bloated and messy in our CSS files. It\u2019s an uncomfortable feeling.\n\nHere are a pair of methods I\u2019ve found to be pretty helpful in keeping the potential bloat and wire-crossing under control when CSS has its hands in both presentation and behaviour.\n\nSame eggs, more baskets\n\nStructuring your CSS to have separate files for layout, typography, grids, and so on is a fairly common approach these days. But which one do you put your transitions and animations in? The initial answer, as always, is \u201cit depends\u201d.\n\nSmall effects here and there will likely sit just fine with your other styles. When you move into more involved effects that require multiple animations and some logic support from JavaScript, it\u2019s probably time to choose none of the above, and create a separate CSS file just for them.\n\nPutting all your animations in one file is a huge help for code organization. Even if you opt for a name less literal than animations.css, you\u2019ll know exactly where to go for anything CSS animation related. That saves time and effort when it comes to editing and maintenance. Keeping track of which animations are still currently used is easier when they\u2019re all grouped together as well. And as an added bonus, you won\u2019t have to look at all those horribly unattractive and repetitive prefixed @-keyframe rules unless you actually need to.\n\nAn animations.css file might look something like the snippet below. It defines each animation\u2019s keyframes and defines a class for each variation of that animation you\u2019ll be using. Depending on the situation, you may also want to include transitions here in a similar way. (I\u2019ve found defining transitions as their own class, or mixin, to be a huge help in past projects for me.)\n\n// defining the animation\n@keyframes catFall {\n from { background-position: center 0;}\n to {background-position: center 1000px;}\n}\n@-webkit-keyframes catFall {\n from { background-position: center 0;}\n to {background-position: center 1000px;}\n}\n@-moz-keyframes catFall {\n from { background-position: center 0;}\n to {background-position: center 1000px;}\n}\n@-ms-keyframes catFall {\n from { background-position: center 0;}\n to {background-position: center 1000px;}\n}\n\n\u2026\n\n// class that assigns the animation\n\n.catsBackground {\n height: 100%;\n background: transparent url(../endlessKittens.png) 0 0 repeat-y;\n animation: catFall 1s linear infinite;\n -webkit-animation: catFall 1s linear infinite;\n -moz-animation: catFall 1s linear infinite;\n -ms-animation: catFall 1s linear infinite;\n}\n\nIf we don\u2019t need it, why load it?\n\nHaving all those CSS animations and transitions in one file gives us the added flexibility to load them only when we want to. Loading a whole lot of things that will never be used might seem like a bit of a waste.\n\nWhile CSS has us impressed with its motion chops, it falls flat when it comes to the logic and fine-grained control. JavaScript, on the other hand, is pretty good at both those things. Chances are the content of your animations.css file isn\u2019t acting alone. You\u2019ll likely be adding and removing classes via JavaScript to manage your CSS animations at the very least. If your CSS animations are so entwined with JavaScript, why not let them hang out with the rest of the behaviour layer and only come out to play when JavaScript is supported?\n\nDynamically linking your animations.css file like this means it will be completely ignored if JavaScript is off or not supported. No JavaScript? No additional behaviour, not even the parts handled by CSS.\n\n<script>\ndocument.write('<link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"animations.css\">');\n</script>\n\nThis technique comes up in progressive enhancement techniques as well, but it can help here to keep your presentation and behaviour nicely separated when more than one language is involved. The aim in both cases is to avoid loading files we won\u2019t be using.\n\nIf you happen to be doing something a bit fancier \u2013 like 3-D transforms or critical animations that require more nuanced fallbacks \u2013 you might need something like modernizr to step in to determine support more specifically. But the general idea is the same.\n\nSumming it all up\n\nUsing a couple of simple techniques like these, we get to pick where to best draw the line between behaviour and presentation based on the situation at hand, not just on what language we\u2019re using. The power of when to separate and how to reassemble the individual pieces can be even greater if you use preprocessors as part of your process. We\u2019ve got a lot of options! The important part is to make forward-thinking choices to save your future self, and even your current self, unnecessary headaches.", "year": "2012", "author": "Val Head", "author_slug": "valhead", "published": "2012-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/giving-css-animations-and-transitions-their-place/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 210, "title": "Stop Leaving Animation to the Last Minute", "contents": "Our design process relies heavily on static mockups as deliverables and this makes it harder than it needs to be to incorporate UI animation in our designs. Talking through animation ideas and dancing out the details of those ideas can be fun; but it\u2019s not always enough to really evaluate or invest in animated design solutions. \nBy including deliverables that encourage discussing animation throughout your design process, you can set yourself (and your team) up for creating meaningful UI animations that feel just as much a part of the design as your colour palette and typeface. You can get out of that \u201crunning out of time to add in the animation\u201d trap by deliberately including animation in the early phases of your design process. This will give you both the space to treat animation as a design tool, and the room to iterate on UI animation ideas to come up with higher quality solutions. Two deliverables that can be especially useful for this are motion comps and animated interactive prototypes. \nMotion comps - an animation deliverable\nMotion comps (also called animatics or motion mock-ups) are usually video representation of UI animations. They are used to explore the details of how a particular animation might play out. And they\u2019re most often made with timeline-based tools like Adobe After Effects, Adobe Animate, or Tumult Hype. \nThe most useful things about motion comps is how they allow designers and developers to share the work of creating animations. (Instead of pushing all the responsibility of animation on one group or the other.) For example, imagine you\u2019re working on a design that has a content panel that can either be open or closed. You might create a mockup like the one below including the two different views: the closed state and the open state. If you\u2019re working with only static deliverables, these two artboards might be exactly what you handoff to developers along with the instruction to animate between the two. \n\nOn the surface that seems pretty straight forward, but even with this relatively simple transition there\u2019s a lot that those two artboards don\u2019t address. There are seven things that change between the closed state and the open state. That\u2019s seven things the developer building this out has to figure out how to move in and out of view, when, and in what order. And all of that is even before starting to write the code to make it work. \nBy providing only static comps, all the logic of the animation falls on the developer. This might go ok if she has the bandwidth and animation knowledge, but that\u2019s making an awful lot of assumptions.\nInstead, if you included a motion mock up like this with your static mock ups, you could share the work of figuring out the logic of the animation between design and development. Designers could work out the logic of the animation in the motion comp, exploring which items move at which times and in which order to create the opening and closing transitions. \n\nThe motion comp can also be used to iterate on different possible animation approaches before any production code has to be committed too. Sharing the work and giving yourself time to explore animation ideas before you\u2019re backed up again the deadline will lead to happier teammates and better design solutions. \nWhen to use motion comps\nI\u2019m not a fan of making more deliverables just for the sake of having more things to make, so I find it helps to narrow down what question I\u2019m trying answer before choosing which sort of deliverable to make to investigate. \nMotion comps can be most helpful for answering questions like: \n\nExactly how should this animation look? \nWhich items should move? Where? And when? \nDo the animation qualities reflect our brand or our voice and tone?\nOne of the added bonuses of creating motion comps to answer these questions is that you\u2019ll have a concrete thing to bring to design critiques or reviews to get others\u2019 input on them as well.\n\nUsing motion comps as handoff\nMotion comps are often used to handoff animation ideas from design to development. They can be super useful for this, but they\u2019re even more useful when you include the details of the motion specs with them. (It\u2019s difficult, if not impossible, to glean these details from playing back a video.)\nMore specifically, you\u2019ll want to include:\n\nDurations and the properties animated for each animation\nEasing curve values or spring values used\nDelay values and repeat counts\n\nIn many cases you\u2019ll have to collect these details up manually. But this isn\u2019t necessarily something that that will take a lot of time. If you take note of them as you\u2019re creating the motion comp, chances are most of these details will already be top of  mind. (Also, if you use After Effects for your motion comps, the Inspector Spacetime plugin might be helpful for this task.)\nAnimated prototypes - an interactive deliverable\nMaking prototypes isn\u2019t a new idea for web work by any stretch, but creating prototypes that include animation \u2013 or even creating prototypes specifically to investigate potential animation solutions \u2013 can go a long way towards having higher quality animations in your final product.\nInteractive prototypes are web or app-based, or displayed in a particular tool\u2019s preview window to create a useable version of interactions that might end up in the end product. They\u2019re often made with prototyping apps like Principle, Framer, or coded up in HTML, CSS and JS directly like the example below.\nSee the Pen Prototype example by Val Head (@valhead) on CodePen.\n\nThe biggest different between motion comps and animated prototypes is the interactivity. Prototypes can reposed to taps, drags or gestures, while motion comps can only play back in a linear fashion. Generally speaking, this makes prototypes a bit more of an effort to create, but they can also help you solve different problems. The interactive nature of prototypes can also make them useful for user testing to further evaluate potential solutions. \nWhen to use prototypes\nWhen it comes to testing out animation ideas, animated prototypes can be especially helpful in answering questions like these: \n\nHow will this interaction feel to use? (Interactive animations often have different timing needs than animations that are passively viewed.)\nWhat will the animation be like with real data or real content? \nDoes this animation fit the context of the task at hand? \n\nPrototypes can be used to investigate the same questions that motion comps do if you\u2019re comfortable working in code or your prototyping tool of choice has capabilities to address high fidelity animation details. There are so many different prototyping tools out there at the moment, you\u2019re sure to be able to find one that fits your needs. \nAs a quick side note: If you\u2019re worried that your coding skills might not be up to par to prototype in code, know that prototype code doesn\u2019t have to be production quality code. Animated prototypes\u2019 main concern is working out the animation details. Once you\u2019ve arrived at a combination of animations that works, the animation specifics can be extracted or the prototype can be refactored for production.\nMotion comp or prototype?\nBoth motion comps and prototypes can be extremely useful in the design process and you can use whichever one (or ones) that best fits your team\u2019s style. The key thing that both offer is a way to make animation ideas visible and sharable. When you and your teammate are both looking at the same deliverable, you can be confident you\u2019re talking about the same thing and discuss its pros and cons more easily than just describing the idea verbally. \nMotion comps tend to be more useful earlier in the design process when you want to focus on the motion without worrying about the underlying structure or code yet. Motion comps also be great when you want to try something completely new. Some folks prefer motion comps because the tools for making them feel more familiar to them which means they can work faster. \nPrototypes are most useful for animations that rely heavily on interaction. (Getting the timing right for interactions can be tough without the interaction part sometimes.) Prototypes can also be helpful to investigate and optimize performance if that\u2019s a specific concern.\nGive them a try\nWhichever deliverables you choose to highlight your animation decisions, including them in your design reviews, critiques, or other design discussions will help you make better UI animation choices. More discussion around UI animation ideas during the design phase means greater buy-in, more room for iteration, and higher quality UI animations in your designs. Why not give them a try for your next project?", "year": "2017", "author": "Val Head", "author_slug": "valhead", "published": "2017-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/stop-leaving-animation-to-the-last-minute/", "topic": "design"}