> For example, to have an element “animate away”: create a new purely-visual element at an absolute location that looks like the original object, delete the ori

> For example, to have an element “animate away”: create a new purely-visual element at an absolute location that looks like the original object, delete the original object immediately, and then let the proxy go away whenever it is done animating. This completely frees you from having to worry about the true lifetime of the original object. The OPs point is that doing this is far more DOM-intensive, and leads to worse performance. It isn't a good solution.