David Baron :dbaron: Reporter
	Description • 12 years ago

We should add an API to allow authors to explicitly start transitions from JavaScript (probably even without messing with the transition properties).  This will substantially improve performance from the flushing-based hacks that authors have to use now to do this.

See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Mar/0729.html
(though we might want more parameters to the function)

	Chris Lord [:cwiiis]
	Comment 1 • 11 years ago

Apologies if I don't have the whole story here or this is a naive question, but wouldn't it be nicer to fix the issue of uncomputed style changes affecting transitions/animations? I don't see why there should be an API for this when there could just be intuitive default behaviour. Especially in the situations where our current behaviour differs with other browsers (or is this perfectly consistent across all browsers?)

	David Baron :dbaron: Reporter
	Comment 2 • 11 years ago

Because that would require us to disable optimizations that are critical for the performance of the Web.  Transitions are triggered by changes to computed style; batching up computed style changes until needed is critical for performance.

	Chris Lord [:cwiiis]
	Comment 3 • 11 years ago

(In reply to David Baron [:dbaron] (needinfo? me) from comment #2)
> Because that would require us to disable optimizations that are critical for
> the performance of the Web.  Transitions are triggered by changes to
> computed style; batching up computed style changes until needed is critical
> for performance.

Right, but I don't see why they're mutually exclusive? On the simplest level, you could flush style changes before any change to a transitioning property; alternatively, you could batch style changes that transition and ones that don't, and flush when switching between the two?

It just seems if you're changing a transitioning property, you intend it to transition immediately, and the current behaviour is leaking implementation details that a developer ought not to have to be aware of.

	David Baron :dbaron: Reporter
	Comment 4 • 11 years ago

I don't understand what you're saying -- but anyway, could you move this discussion elsewhere?