Written on January 25, 2016

Animation is a design tool which does non straight impact content only instead is used for visual cues and transitions from one UI chemical element to another. For web pattern, blitheness is used to shine an already completed product. CSS and Javascript are 2 animation tools and both have pros and cons when it comes to functionality, overhead, and performance.

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Functionality

In terms of functionality, CSS and Javascript are fairly like. Both are able to practice very impressive animations but it becomes more of a question of what exactly the animation needs to practise. Animating using CSS is known as a declarative approach while Javascript is imperative. What this means is in CSS you must specify specifically what has to happen, while in Javascript you are able to programmatically ascertain the blitheness.This means you lot have more control over an animation when using Javascript. For case, playing a complicated animation in reverse would exist difficult in CSS as you lot would need to specify boosted transition properties on every piece of the animation.

Overhead

Javascript and CSS have a key difference, which is overhead. CSS is the aforementioned in every development surroundings and it is elementary to learn and adequately straightforward. Javascript, on the other manus, is virtually the opposite. Although basic Javascript has animation functionality, well-nigh animation is washed through an boosted library such as GSAP or velocity.js. Developers who are familiar with one library may not exist familiar with some other, pregnant much development time must be spent on grooming. Additionally, many development environments may be using another Javascript library such equally JQuery for not-blitheness development, which will pb to conflicts as many Javascript libraries are non compatible. Therefore, when developing it is important to consider the overhead cost of Javascript libraries.

Performance

Performance is another important consideration, specially if developing on mobile platforms. CSS has fairly good performance as it offloads blitheness logic onto the browser itself. This lets the browser optimize DOM interaction and retention consumption and most chiefly, uses the GPU to meliorate performance. On the other hand, Javascript performance can range from reasonably faster to much slower than CSS. Javascript functioning depends on the library used and puts the burden on the programmer to optimize. For example, JQuery is a commonly used library but is notorious for irksome blitheness functioning because information technology is not designed with animation in mind. Also, adding Javascript libraries creates more overhead and can increase page load times especially for mobile devices. There are lightweight libraries out there specifically for this consequence, but lightweight libraries also take less functionality. As mentioned earlier, yous may have to optimize performance which is completely dependent on the library being used. Using CSS or Javascript for animation is highly dependent on what you are trying to do. Javascript tin can be very powerful but is completely unnecessary if all y'all are doing is something like fading in a pop upwards window. Most of the time just using CSS is plenty, simply complicated animations can be difficult to do without using Javascript. If you lot decide to use Javascript, make certain to pick a suitable library which does non disharmonize with other libraries you lot may already exist using.

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