The CSS scripts were introduced in the first place to enhance the layout and the ergonomics of the web pages. They include a wide range of properties and attributes that can be easily handled. In fact, they allowed the integration of some tags within some others and made them work as local attributes. The invention of JavaScript has revolutionised the front-end development by expanding the ergonomics features by adding animations in response to particular events on the screen. The development continues and we can witness more and more CSS scripts that are able to work without the usual JavaScript intervention: the self-animated CSS. Will they dismiss the JavaScript animation?
Basics of CSS:
CSS is the abbreviation of Cascading Style Sheets, which are the set of properties of the HTML tags. In other words, CSS scripts will define how an HTML element will display on the web page. Basically, it was created to reduce the code weight; one single CSS script can control multiple elements on multiple pages.
Basics of JavaScript:
JavaScript is a client-side programming language. In other words, the produced scripts are intended to be executed without having the page to reload. In ergonomic terms, the JavaScript language has improved the interactivity of the web pages with the users. The language inherits some Java properties and has a powerful event handler. It is a semi-compiled language and it is portable, which means that it works perhaps on all the platforms without the need for additional scripting.
CSS and JavaScript to create animations:
Usually, the freelance web designer Singapore will implement some JavaScript codes to create amazing animations. The codes operate using the CSS properties. For example, changing the background, scaling the elements, changing the positions of the elements, changing the orientation of the elements, and more operations are, in reality, the alteration of the attributes of the related tags. The JavaScript here will use the event handler to “catch” the user activity, then execute the code. The code will, therefore, alter the attribute value resulting in a new behavior of the element.
CSS animations and limitations:
Creating animations using the CSS scripting is possible. The fact is, there is some event handlers, introduced in the CSS code that allows altering the attributes values. These event handlers were first introduced to handle the “anchor” tag “<a></a>”. In fact, the underline of the active link and the color of the visited link are modified using the “hover” and “clicked” properties which are not JavaScript entities. The CSS animations have since extended to cover more complex behavior and animations that for a long time, were thought impossible without JavaScript implementations. Working on these animations has lead to the creation of a dedicated library of elementary animations qualified “library of transitions”.
However, the use of CSS to create JavaScript-free animations encounters some constraints which can be summarized as:
- Dependencies: some dependencies are hard to break. The example of handling the scale, the orientation, and the position independently is the most famous.
- Animation playback control: CSS don’t allow the full control of the keyframes of the animation.
Conclusion:
The CSS animations are definitely a shift in the web animation technologies. They offer the possibility of creating animation without worrying about the compatibility with the browser. However, it seems that dismissing the JavaScript language is not for soon. The language will continue having the upper hand over CSS.