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I want to talk about something that has nothing to do with books or Amazon but CSS, and this website is a good example. CSS transitions are a great feature, ho

by seszett 13y ago

I want to talk about something that has nothing to do with books or Amazon but CSS, and this website is a good example. CSS transitions are a great feature, however, using them to make hyperlinks fade slowly over 500ms on hover is a really bad idea. It is both distracting and not helpful, as a casual pass over a link with the mouse won't actually reveal it. So please, please, by all means use CSS transitions for nice graphic effects, or to make the colour transition smoother over 50, or 100ms, but too much is not better. I have the feeling CSS transitions are quickly becoming a kind of modern standard of amateur design, discreet and appealing yet annoying and distracting, like coloured scrollbars and animated mouse cursors once were.

wil421 13y ago
Amateur dev/designer here. Agreed that CSS transitions are neat and easy to use but you are right about the hyperlinks being a bad place to use them. If the link in the page wasn't the URL and instead just a word in the paragraphs I wouldn't have noticed it either. When I use transitions for links or to open sub menus I usually pick a color that really stands out so they can understand they should click there. Usually 100ms will do fine, I think the transitions have their place but some people including my Manager do not like them for links or menus.
teh_klev 13y ago
I wish folks would just make links look like links - blue underlined text that turns purple if visited, just like the good old days - instead of making me scan through the text with my mouse just in case I miss something.
yoshokatana 13y ago
CSS transitions need to be a lot more subtle than they usually are. I've seen a few good examples (Medium comes to mind), but most sites that use them implement them very garishly. For links, I've found that a 150ms intro animation and a 250ms outro (with the proper easing) is the maximum duration that looks good.

by seszett 13y ago

wil421 13y ago

Amateur dev/designer here. Agreed that CSS transitions are neat and easy to use but you are right about the hyperlinks being a bad place to use them. If the link in the page wasn't the URL and instead just a word in the paragraphs I wouldn't have noticed it either. When I use transitions for links or to open sub menus I usually pick a color that really stands out so they can understand they should click there. Usually 100ms will do fine, I think the transitions have their place but some people including my Manager do not like them for links or menus.

teh_klev 13y ago

I wish folks would just make links look like links - blue underlined text that turns purple if visited, just like the good old days - instead of making me scan through the text with my mouse just in case I miss something.

yoshokatana 13y ago

CSS transitions need to be a lot more subtle than they usually are. I've seen a few good examples (Medium comes to mind), but most sites that use them implement them very garishly. For links, I've found that a 150ms intro animation and a 250ms outro (with the proper easing) is the maximum duration that looks good.