3 ms·

Why has Edge gone with div-based animation

29 points by tbassetto 15y ago

splatcollision 15y ago
This is a great thread, thanks for bringing it here. As someone who's built a CSS3/DOM animation tool these posts were very interesting to me (Edit Room - link and info in profile). My philosophy is that keeping a semantic DOM HTML structure and setting those elements up for animation is the way to go, for accessibility, focusing on content first, mobile first, etc. To those asking why not just use SVG or Canvas - including SVG and Canvas for the things they are good for, (vectors / filters / generated graphics) plays to each technologies' strengths. Getting a release out the door is something we all aspire too, and it looks like support for those are coming as well. If they are smart, they will keep the DOM animation as well - it's a great common baseline, can be extended into the past with javascript (like they are doing now) It's fine, there are tons of animation tools cooking out on the web as well - if this doesn't fit with some people's workflow, then other tools will. Thanks to Adobe for moving the competitive landscape forwards.
ljlolel 15y ago
we used div-based animations in turntable
Sembiance 15y ago
For full-window animations, canvas would be pretty slow in many browsers. Also SVG hasn't always had the best browser support. I use DOM based animations for http://worldofsolitaire.com http://worldofsolitaire.com and it has worked great for many years. On my To-Do list is adding support for CSS transforms where possible so that the animations can be hardware accelerated when available.
tomlin 15y ago
I know that it's posh to hate on Adobe, but in all measures of truth and relative endearment, Adobe isn't really that bad of a software company. Like any software company, they've (still are?) going through a bit of a wobbly period. Macromedia was an essential buy for Adobe, but with it Adobe picked up a lot of legacy ideologies that Macromedia fostered within their products. Not to say Macromedia was a poor software company. I think Macromedia was bought by Adobe just as it had itself managed to find itself within its industry. Flash is proprietary, yes. A lot of the software you use everyday is proprietary - or at least to the point where codec/patent hounds aren't sniffing at your door. We can now see that Adobe is trying to right the ship here with Edge. People still gripe about Adobe as if they have something up their sleeve. Well, of course they do. They are trying to make a profit on creating creative authoring tools. Flash is a creative technology. Just because it's locked up doesn't change that. Now HTML5 + JS libs are making a run for creative minds (over developer ones) and Adobe sees that and is fine with it. In fact, overall, it's probably easier for them as they don't have to maintain their own language or pay any licensing fees so long as they don't include support for infringing patents. It's nice to see Adobe didn't take the developer/designer lightly when one of their flagship products was being gunned at from every direction. Personally, I thought Adobe would have to go through a much longer period of self-reflection before Edge would be seen. I know Steve Jobs hates Adobe, even if at times it doesn't really make a whole lot of business sense to do so. And I know Adobe is imperfect, like a lot of software companies are. But Edge smells of change and I like it.

29 points by tbassetto 15y ago

This is a great thread, thanks for bringing it here. As someone who's built a CSS3/DOM animation tool these posts were very interesting to me (Edit Room - link and info in profile). My philosophy is that keeping a semantic DOM HTML structure and setting those elements up for animation is the way to go, for accessibility, focusing on content first, mobile first, etc. To those asking why not just use SVG or Canvas - including SVG and Canvas for the things they are good for, (vectors / filters / generated graphics) plays to each technologies' strengths. Getting a release out the door is something we all aspire too, and it looks like support for those are coming as well. If they are smart, they will keep the DOM animation as well - it's a great common baseline, can be extended into the past with javascript (like they are doing now) It's fine, there are tons of animation tools cooking out on the web as well - if this doesn't fit with some people's workflow, then other tools will. Thanks to Adobe for moving the competitive landscape forwards.

ljlolel 15y ago

we used div-based animations in turntable

Sembiance 15y ago

For full-window animations, canvas would be pretty slow in many browsers. Also SVG hasn't always had the best browser support. I use DOM based animations for http://worldofsolitaire.com http://worldofsolitaire.com and it has worked great for many years. On my To-Do list is adding support for CSS transforms where possible so that the animations can be hardware accelerated when available.

tomlin 15y ago

I know that it's posh to hate on Adobe, but in all measures of truth and relative endearment, Adobe isn't really that bad of a software company. Like any software company, they've (still are?) going through a bit of a wobbly period. Macromedia was an essential buy for Adobe, but with it Adobe picked up a lot of legacy ideologies that Macromedia fostered within their products. Not to say Macromedia was a poor software company. I think Macromedia was bought by Adobe just as it had itself managed to find itself within its industry. Flash is proprietary, yes. A lot of the software you use everyday is proprietary - or at least to the point where codec/patent hounds aren't sniffing at your door. We can now see that Adobe is trying to right the ship here with Edge. People still gripe about Adobe as if they have something up their sleeve. Well, of course they do. They are trying to make a profit on creating creative authoring tools. Flash is a creative technology. Just because it's locked up doesn't change that. Now HTML5 + JS libs are making a run for creative minds (over developer ones) and Adobe sees that and is fine with it. In fact, overall, it's probably easier for them as they don't have to maintain their own language or pay any licensing fees so long as they don't include support for infringing patents. It's nice to see Adobe didn't take the developer/designer lightly when one of their flagship products was being gunned at from every direction. Personally, I thought Adobe would have to go through a much longer period of self-reflection before Edge would be seen. I know Steve Jobs hates Adobe, even if at times it doesn't really make a whole lot of business sense to do so. And I know Adobe is imperfect, like a lot of software companies are. But Edge smells of change and I like it.