Mozilla software engineer Brian Birtles has announced on his blog that the First Public Working Draft (FPWD) of Web Animations has shipped.
The draft can be found on the W3C website. The technology defines a “model for synchronisation and timing of changes to the presentation of a web page” and is “an application programming interface for interacting with this model”.
.net spoke to spec co-editor Birtles last year about web animations. At the time, he hoped for all manner of practical applications. Examples included animated subtitles overlaid onto video that would remain synchronised and fewer limitations to adding visual clues to an interface via animation. It would also potentially deal with existing limitations regarding CSS Animation and SVG Animation.
The Web Animations 1.0 draft follows this line of thinking, with outlined use cases including user interface effects and visual storytelling. For the former, an example provided in the Working Draft is an item being removed from a shopping cart, which causes the relevant table row to fade and subsequent ones to move upwards. For storytelling, the spec mentions animated effects beyond a “presentational adjunct to content,” such as animations that involve characters moving along paths, synchronisation and sequences, play control and triggers.
On his post, Birtles provided further insight into Web Animations, such as what it includes and what will be left to other specifications. He also said work had already started in Blink and was on the radar for Gecko. In the meantime, a polyfill covers much of the Working Draft.
Image: Brian Birtles
