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Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

Why all the hate? It's not like you have to use these everywhere just because they exist. The fact that it's possible is good to know as one day it might be a good solution for a problem I'm facing, and then I'll be happy that it exists.

A couple of use cases I can think of:

* Attracting attention to options in a demo

* A game for kids, or otherwise 'wacky' pages

If we restricted web browsers to what developers think we should use, we'd still be using plain green text on black terminals.

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> If we restricted web browsers to what developers think we should use, we'd still be using plain green text on black terminals.

Be still, my beating heart ;)

> If we restricted web browsers to what developers think we should use

That's basically what AMP and Facebook Pages are. They're far nicer to browse on mobile than 'unrestricted' news sites.

Still, I agree these have valid uses.

Finally someone with an open mind. Its not about what is practical, it is about what is possible. Take what is possible and decide what is practical for your use case.

Holy words, thanks.

Good demo, by the way, though I might suggest:

* making it more obvious that it's a CSS-only solution (which is a very good thing)

* showing how to add them - i.e. you just include a CSS file and add a class to the label

* show which browsers are supported, including touchscreens

And possibly a feature request: can you animate as an event? For example, I might want to draw attention to a radio element without checking it.

Hi, thanks for the suggestions, all very smart. For events what do you mean? You could always trigger checked by javascript or jquery or whatever :)

So I could so something like:

    $('.focus').prop('checked', true);

But if I wanted to attract attention to the radio box, the only way of animating it with this library would be to check it, and that might cause problems if I've got listeners for the 'change' event. So if I could just do something like:

    $('.focus').addClass('bounce');

that would be nice.

Oh, understood what you mean, you could use the animation name, it's included in the CSS files.

Just: .my-class{ animation: boing 2s etc...}

Pointing out it's not 720kb in size :)

Fortunately i'd say ;P

> If we restricted web browsers to what developers think we should use, we'd still be using plain green text on black terminals.

I'd wager that there are more developers scared of the commandline than are comfortable with it.

Yes, I should have said 'some developers'. Suggesting all developers believe a certain thing is a massive over-generalisation.

Now, yes. But you only have to turn the clock back a decade or three to find most devs were comfortable with the command line.

It's those grey beards! #ageism

Because we're traumatized by bouncing pie charts, video backgrounds and parallax scrolling? Many people are eventually forced to use or worse - implement websites with stuff like this even when they really don't want to.

Also, because flashy web gimmics receive disproportionate amount of attention compared to less glamorous but practical concepts. Even here, on an ostensibly technical website.

> Why all the hate? It's not like you have to use these everywhere just because they exist.

I do, because I can guarantee that some self-proclaimed web designer will use them for absolutely no reason at all.

> The fact that it's possible is good to know as one day it might be a good solution for a problem I'm facing, and then I'll be happy that it exists.

This argument is so useless. "Well maybe someone wants to shoot themselves in the foot. Nobody can come up with any examples, but maybe."

> Attracting attention to options in a demo

None of the effects are really useful for that. Apart from them being too wacky ("did something break?"), anything transitive is bad for that anyway, because what if the user gets distracted for the split-second your animation runs? Fade in some persistent element for that.

> If we restricted web browsers to what developers think we should use, we'd still be using plain green text on black terminals.

Command-line tools are popular for a reason: They get shit done, and don't distract people with useless crap.

The internet consists of a lot more than business forms. I would be frustrated if I saw bouncing radio boxes when applying for a passport, but if I was playing a game or using a demo for a non-critical service, then I'd quite like them.

If a designer mis-uses them... well that's the designer's fault. People mis-use hammers, but it makes no sense to blame the hammer.

Some people do like to see 'useless crap' on some websites, and their opinions are just as valid as yours.

Indeed, totally agree, every project is a self story, nobody has the rights or the expertise to say it's useless or good or bad, because what is bad for me could be good for you and viceversa.

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