This is interesting, from my experience javascript navigation usually provides what I'll call page transitions. It lets the transition between pages be animated and seamless. That's something I do...
This is interesting, from my experience javascript navigation usually provides what I'll call page transitions. It lets the transition between pages be animated and seamless. That's something I do wish was more easily achieved with modern web standards.
Is that the dev's experience or a users experience? As a user of web (tho I'm also a programmer), I simply don't care at all about animation unless when it slows my computer or my interactions...
Is that the dev's experience or a users experience? As a user of web (tho I'm also a programmer), I simply don't care at all about animation unless when it slows my computer or my interactions with it down, in which case my relation to them is rather negative (i.e. I swear at my screen like a 5yo). I also fail to find the "seams" when clicking away on proper websites which don't fiddle with stuff that browsers do. If that was so desirable, just ask the browser devs to implement it, or just implement it once and for all in Webkit, Gecko and Blink (potentially cheaper than the cost of total man-hours spent animating page transitions world-wide the other day).
Every bit of dev-imposed styling and customisation is a disservice to the users, especially the disabled, the amateur, and the power-user. For me it is both a mild accessibility issue and a power-user issue: I have astigmatism and low contrast or very thin type puts a lot of strain on my eyes, and the styling and custom behaviour slows me down way beyond acceptable: looking at a page, you just can't know what scrolling, clicking, hovering, moving your mouse, pressing some key, or even just thinking out lout will end up doing; or tell what is a button or other input, what is a link, and what is just plain old text. Same goes with apps: no general convention, just pure luck. Add to that the obsession with icons, using apps and websites becomes a PITA.
I cuss and swear big mouthfuls when pressing the back or forwards button does or can not do the thing it supposed to. Please don't fiddle with it for no reason at all. Don't make people read your pages despite the JS, CSS and layout
Usually the point of animations is to hide loading. From a purely numbers point of view it might technically be longer (due to CPU/GPU cycles spent on the animations), but it can still feel faster...
I simply don't care at all about animation unless when it slows my computer or my interactions with it down, in which case my relation to them is rather negative
Usually the point of animations is to hide loading. From a purely numbers point of view it might technically be longer (due to CPU/GPU cycles spent on the animations), but it can still feel faster when there's no loading bar. Once I realized this, I stopped minding animations so much.
A real-world parallel is this Houston airport:
It takes on average 8 minutes for luggage to go from plane to baggage claim. Customers can walk to baggage claim in one minute, resulting in 7 minutes of impatient waiting. Complaints are high.
Instead of speeding up how quickly bags arrive in the claim area, they slowed down the speed at which passengers arrived. They moved the arrival gates so that they are further away from baggage claim. This increased the walk time so that waiting in the baggage claim area was reduced to almost nothing. Complaints also dropped to almost nothing.
The takeaway is that not all waiting is equal. While animations can feel annoying at times, they can also serve an important purpose in reducing downtime frustration while waiting on the app/page/whatever to think.
I assure you that it does not feel faster at all. It's only the webdevs that notice those differences (this should be properly lab tested once and for all; an anecdotal simile is no proof, not...
I assure you that it does not feel faster at all. It's only the webdevs that notice those differences (this should be properly lab tested once and for all; an anecdotal simile is no proof, not even a good analogy). And if you look at the article, this bypasses actual features that actually make pages feel they load faster by partially rendering them as they are downloaded: you have screenful(s) of stuff before you while the rest of the page loads. Way more useful than a time-consuming, browser-slowing animation. And, like, nobody will notice a few seconds plus or minus, but if you're trying to hide a load time bigger than that, go fix your pages or servers instead, you're doing something really wrong. People aren't fools, they realise it's slow whatever animation you put before them.
So just to clarify, I'm speaking more generally about the use of animations than just pages. The example I had in mind was actually smartphones. eg. launching an app might do a small "expand to...
So just to clarify, I'm speaking more generally about the use of animations than just pages. The example I had in mind was actually smartphones. eg. launching an app might do a small "expand to fill the screen" animation as it starts loading things into memory.
As for pages, it would make the most sense when doing an expensive task. Say you were loading a complex weather page that had to pull data from a variety of sources. The expected 2-3 second load could be disguised by an animation. Maybe you can load today's weather first and it shows a brief overview of that before expanding to show the full week. Just one idea.
It's a super open ended problem with many approaches and solutions. I just wanted to make the point that animations aren't inherently a bad thing (which I used to assume they were).
And if you look at the article, this bypasses actual features that actually make pages feel they load faster by partially rendering them as they are downloaded
Funny enough, this is both a good and bad thing. Sometimes it's desirable to delay paints; especially when it comes to webfonts. It comes down to FOUT vs FOIT, and which is less jarring/frustrating for the reader. Different schools of thought, which is why font-display now exists.
In the optimal case, the animation wouldn't slow anything down anything because network latency is limiting and leaves spare CPU cycles which can be used for an animation. In real life though, the...
In the optimal case, the animation wouldn't slow anything down anything because network latency is limiting and leaves spare CPU cycles which can be used for an animation. In real life though, the bandwith-delay product is rather low and the CPU is also doing other things than just waiting for network input.
A bit of both actually, I ascribe to a very standards first point of view when I do development stuff. But as a user I find that animations can be fun, performant, and useful. An ok example might...
Is that the dev's experience or a users experience?
A bit of both actually, I ascribe to a very standards first point of view when I do development stuff. But as a user I find that animations can be fun, performant, and useful. An ok example might be Duolingo which uses react and provides a good experience on desktop. Some of their page transitions would be more complicated without react.
But I don't think these libraries are worth much, and I wish browser vendors would thoughtfully add these kinds of features, which I'm sure they will eventually.
Put all the bells and whistles on a page to make the dev feel better, as long as it degrades properly. If the site isnt usable without javascript, it failed already.
Put all the bells and whistles on a page to make the dev feel better, as long as it degrades properly.
If the site isnt usable without javascript, it failed already.
This is interesting, from my experience javascript navigation usually provides what I'll call page transitions. It lets the transition between pages be animated and seamless. That's something I do wish was more easily achieved with modern web standards.
Is that the dev's experience or a users experience? As a user of web (tho I'm also a programmer), I simply don't care at all about animation unless when it slows my computer or my interactions with it down, in which case my relation to them is rather negative (i.e. I swear at my screen like a 5yo). I also fail to find the "seams" when clicking away on proper websites which don't fiddle with stuff that browsers do. If that was so desirable, just ask the browser devs to implement it, or just implement it once and for all in Webkit, Gecko and Blink (potentially cheaper than the cost of total man-hours spent animating page transitions world-wide the other day).
Every bit of dev-imposed styling and customisation is a disservice to the users, especially the disabled, the amateur, and the power-user. For me it is both a mild accessibility issue and a power-user issue: I have astigmatism and low contrast or very thin type puts a lot of strain on my eyes, and the styling and custom behaviour slows me down way beyond acceptable: looking at a page, you just can't know what scrolling, clicking, hovering, moving your mouse, pressing some key, or even just thinking out lout will end up doing; or tell what is a button or other input, what is a link, and what is just plain old text. Same goes with apps: no general convention, just pure luck. Add to that the obsession with icons, using apps and websites becomes a PITA.
I cuss and swear big mouthfuls when pressing the back or forwards button does or can not do the thing it supposed to. Please don't fiddle with it for no reason at all. Don't make people read your pages despite the JS, CSS and layout
Usually the point of animations is to hide loading. From a purely numbers point of view it might technically be longer (due to CPU/GPU cycles spent on the animations), but it can still feel faster when there's no loading bar. Once I realized this, I stopped minding animations so much.
A real-world parallel is this Houston airport:
https://stephenshapiro.com/walk-wait-innovation/
The takeaway is that not all waiting is equal. While animations can feel annoying at times, they can also serve an important purpose in reducing downtime frustration while waiting on the app/page/whatever to think.
I assure you that it does not feel faster at all. It's only the webdevs that notice those differences (this should be properly lab tested once and for all; an anecdotal simile is no proof, not even a good analogy). And if you look at the article, this bypasses actual features that actually make pages feel they load faster by partially rendering them as they are downloaded: you have screenful(s) of stuff before you while the rest of the page loads. Way more useful than a time-consuming, browser-slowing animation. And, like, nobody will notice a few seconds plus or minus, but if you're trying to hide a load time bigger than that, go fix your pages or servers instead, you're doing something really wrong. People aren't fools, they realise it's slow whatever animation you put before them.
So just to clarify, I'm speaking more generally about the use of animations than just pages. The example I had in mind was actually smartphones. eg. launching an app might do a small "expand to fill the screen" animation as it starts loading things into memory.
As for pages, it would make the most sense when doing an expensive task. Say you were loading a complex weather page that had to pull data from a variety of sources. The expected 2-3 second load could be disguised by an animation. Maybe you can load today's weather first and it shows a brief overview of that before expanding to show the full week. Just one idea.
It's a super open ended problem with many approaches and solutions. I just wanted to make the point that animations aren't inherently a bad thing (which I used to assume they were).
Funny enough, this is both a good and bad thing. Sometimes it's desirable to delay paints; especially when it comes to webfonts. It comes down to FOUT vs FOIT, and which is less jarring/frustrating for the reader. Different schools of thought, which is why
font-displaynow exists.In the optimal case, the animation wouldn't slow anything down anything because network latency is limiting and leaves spare CPU cycles which can be used for an animation. In real life though, the bandwith-delay product is rather low and the CPU is also doing other things than just waiting for network input.
A bit of both actually, I ascribe to a very standards first point of view when I do development stuff. But as a user I find that animations can be fun, performant, and useful. An ok example might be Duolingo which uses react and provides a good experience on desktop. Some of their page transitions would be more complicated without react.
But I don't think these libraries are worth much, and I wish browser vendors would thoughtfully add these kinds of features, which I'm sure they will eventually.
Put all the bells and whistles on a page to make the dev feel better, as long as it degrades properly.
If the site isnt usable without javascript, it failed already.