Scroll-Linked Animations

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Chris Coyier on

You scroll down to a certain point, now you want to style things in a certain way. A header becomes fixed. An animation triggers. A table of contents appears. To do anything based on scroll position, JavaScript is required right now. You watch the scroll position via a DOM event and alter an element’s styling based on that position. Or, probably better if you can, use IntersectionObserver. We just blogged about all this.

Now there is a new (unofficial) spec trying to bring these possibilities to CSS. I love it when web standards get involved because it sees authors like us trying to pull off certain design effects and wants to (presumably) help make it easier and more performant. I also like how this spec lists editors from Mozilla and Google and Apple.

I wonder how they’ll handle the infinite-loop stuff here. Like you scroll to a point, it triggers some animation, which moves some element such that it changes the scroll position, which stops the animation, which moves the scroll position again… etc. I also wonder why it’s all specific to animation. “Scroll-position styling” seems like it would have the widest appeal and use level of usefulness.

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