CSS animations — will they replace JS?

[GMB]

Gotta say that I’m really impressed with many of the CSS animations on CodePen and am wondering if those in the know here see it taking more and more of the animation pie away from JS? I’d be curious to know why or why not.

[joshuanhibbert]

It really depends on the scope of the animation. I’m a firm believer in separating content, presentation and interaction (HTML, CSS and JS), so if it is just a little animation that compliments the styling, then use CSS, but if it is interactive, then JS is probably the way to go.

With that being said, I have certainly done interactive animations on CodePen using CSS, but that was more as a showcase, and generally using techniques I wouldn’t recommend for production.

[joshuanhibbert]

@jamy_za The main issue for me is that in many of those cases we are using CSS ‘tricks’, such as the checkbox hack, which are pretty poor semantically.

[Kitty Giraudel]

If no mistake, CSS animations are heavy. Way heavier than JS animations.

[joshuanhibbert]

@jamy_za I do like :target quite a bit, but it can perform poorly in some situations (i.e. repeating clicking, toggling).

[Author]

Posts