JavaScript animation very buggy - javascript

So I have a very small, insignificant site i'm working on. my website If you click on the grey-ish bar at the bottom, it will animate a sort of eased-in for me to use in the future to edit info i put together on various pictures or whatever i decide i want to put up there.
my code for the animation is: (edited to reflect changes)
function animateForm(startPosition,endPosition,firstKey,keyInterval)
{
if(currentKey != lastKey)
{
animationPointer =( .5 * Math.sin((currentKey * (Math.PI/totalKeys)) - (Math.PI/2))) + .5;
currentPosition = (animationPointer)*endPosition;
bottomForm.style.bottom = currentPosition + "px";
currentKey=currentKey+(keyInterval*1);
}
else
{
clearInterval(int);
int=0;
}
}
SOLVED! The problem was that I was multiplying the "animation pointer" (a decimal from 0 to 1 indicating the progress in the animation) by the "end position," and if the animation was aiming for an end position of "0," This set my form's position immediately to the "hide" position, and things asploded from there.
What i needed to do multiply the pointer by the maximum height the form could reach so that on its descent it could gradually return a smaller and smaller value to the "currentPosition" variable.

You're never clearing the setInterval between animations. Simply typing clearInterval; doesn't do anything. You need to store the ID that's returned from setInterval(), and then pass it to a call to clearInterval();.
Because you're not clearing, those original intervals are still running and still trying to operate on the same variables.

Related

Item positioning on scroll gives a warning about asynchronous scrolling

I'm trying to position two images by changing their top margin based on the scroll position.
The margins have a max value as well.
Everything works just fine but I have a warning on the console, saying that this solution can cause a jittery scrolling effect in browsers with asynchronous scrolling.
My first question is, should I worry about this?
Also, this is literally my first few lines of javascript and I'm not sure if this solution is good enough, so any advice is appreciated.
It just looks so simple I feel like there is a catch.
I could do it by adding classes to the images and set the margins in CSS, but it would be a lot longer code I guess.
I'm trying to do this strictly with js and CSS grid, just to learn to solve problems with limited tools.
The images are in a div, which is in a grid cell.
window.addEventListener("scroll", function () {
myMargin = 0.011 * window.scrollY;
if (myMargin < 3.4) { //max margin is 3.4% for myImg1
myImg1.style.marginTop = animMargin + "%";
myImg2.style.marginTop = animMargin / 2.7 + "%"; //myImg2 moves on a different scale
} else {
myImg1.style.marginTop = "3.4%"; //when the max value reached the margin is fixed
myImg2.style.marginTop = "1.25%";
}
});
Scrolling handlers can be intensive and put performance strain on the page as they will fire far more times than your handler actually needs. This ends up causing choppy/lag when scrolling as the browser may need to repaint in response to your handler.
A common technique is to throttle or debouce the handler.
Throttle:
only invokes func at most once per every x milliseconds.
Debouce:
delays invoking func until after x milliseconds have elapsed since the last time the debounced function was invoked.
The warning you are getting is actually fine, but you may benefit from using a throttled callback and increase the wait time to the max that is suitable for your needs - so least times it is called in order for it to work for you.
Demo using lodash throttle
// only call the handler once every 200ms
const throttledScroll = _.throttle(() => {
console.info('throttled', window.scrollY);
}, 200);
window.addEventListener('scroll', throttledScroll);
html,
body {
height: 300vh;
}
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash#4.17.15/lodash.min.js"></script>

Improving iScroll performance on a large table

I'm updating a table header and its first column positions programatically based on how the user scrolls around to keep them aligned.
The issue I'm experiencing is that as soon as my data sets gets big enough, the scrolling gets more and more choppy/less smooth.
The relevant code is at the very bottom of the fiddle:
iScroll.on('scroll', function(){
var pos = $('#scroller').position();
$('#pos').text('pos.left=' + pos.left + ' pos.top=' + pos.top);
// code to hold first row and first column
$('#scroller th:nth-child(1)').css({top: (-pos.top), left: (-pos.left), position:'relative'});
$('#scroller th:nth-child(n+1)').css({top: (-pos.top), position:'relative'});
// this seems to be the most expensive operation:
$('#scroller td:nth-child(1)').css({left: (-pos.left), position:'relative'});
});
I know that this can be written a lot more efficent by caching the elements and so on. For example, I have tried saving the elements in to an array and updating their position in a more "vanilla" fashion:
headerElements[i].style.left = left + 'px'; // etc...
No matter how fast I make the callback, I'm still not happy about the result. Do you have any suggestions?
https://jsfiddle.net/0qv1kjac/16/
Just use ClusterizeJS! It can handle hundreds of thousands of rows and was built exactly for this purpose.
How does it work, you ask?
The main idea is not to pollute DOM with all used tags. Instead of that - it splits the list to clusters, then shows elements for current scroll position and adds extra rows to top and bottom of the list to emulate full height of table so that browser shows scrollbar as for full list
To be able to handle big amounts of data you need data virtualization. It has some restrictions, though.
First you need to decide the size of a view port. Let's say you want to render 10 items in a row and 20 items in column. It would be 10x20 items then. In you fiddle it's div with id wrapper.
Then you need to know total amount of data you have. From your fiddle it would be 100x100 items. And, also you need to know height and width of a item (cell). Let's take 40x120 (in px).
So div#wrapper is a view port, it should have fixed sized like 10x20 items. Then you need to set up correct width and height for table. The height of table would be equal to total amount of data in column including head by item height. Width for table would be total amount of items in single row by item width.
Once you set up these, div#wrapper will receive horizontal and vertical scrolls. Now you able to scroll left and bottom, but it will be just empty space. However this empty space is able to hold exact amount of data you have.
Then you need to take scroll data left and top (position), which comes in pixels and normalize it to amount of items, so you could know not how many pixels you've scrolled, but how many items you've scrolled(or rows if we scroll from top to bottom).
It could be done by division of pixels scrolled on item height. For example, you scrolled to left by 80px, that's 2 items. It means these items should be invisible because you've scrolled past them. So you know that you scrolled past 2 items, and you know that you should see 10 items in a row. That means you take your data array which has data for row with 100 items, and slice it like this:
var visibleItems = rowData.slice(itemsScrolled, itemsScrolled + 10);
It will give you items which should be visible in viewport at current scroll position. Once you have these items you need to construct html and append it to table.
Also on each scroll event you need to set top and left position for tbody and thead so they would move with scroll, otherwise you will have your data, but it will be at (0; 0) inside a viewport.
Anyway, code speaks thousand of words, so here's the fiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/Ldfjrg81/9/
Note, that this approach requires heights and widths to be precise, otherwise it will work incorrectly. Also if you have items of different sizes, this also should be taken into consideration, so better if you have fixed and equal sizes of items. In jsfiddle, I commented out the code which forces first column to stay in place, but you can render it separately.
It's a good solution to stick to some library as suggested in comments, since it handles a lot of cases for you.
You can make rendering even faster if use react.js or vue.js
This won't be the answer your are looking for but here's my 2 cents anyway.
Javascript animation (especially given the amount that the DOM has to render) will never be as smooth as you want it. Even if you could get it smooth on your machine, chances are that it will vary drastically on other peoples (Older PC's, Browsers etc).
I would see 2 options if I were to tackle this myself.
Go old school and add a horizontal and vertical scrollbar. I know it's not a pretty solution but it would work well.
Only render a certain amount of rows and discard those off screen. This could be a bit complicated but in essence you would render say 10 rows. Once the user scrolls to a point where the 11th should be there, render that one and remove the 1st. You would pop them in and out as needed.
In terms of the actual JS (you mentioned putting elements in to an array), that isn't going to help. The actual choppyness is due to the browser needing to render that many elements in the first place.
You're experiencing choppy / non-smooth scrolling because the scroll event fires at a very high pace.
And every time it fires you're adjusting the position of many elements: this is expensive and furthermore until the browser has completed the repaint it's unresponsive (here the choppy scrolling).
I see two options:
Option number one: display only the visible subset of the whole data set (this has been already suggested in another answer so I won't go futher)
Option number two (easier)
First, let animations on left and top css changes occurr via transitions. This is more efficient, is non-blocking and often let the browser take advantage of the gpu
Then instead of repeteadly adjust left and top, do it once a while; for example 0.5 seconds. This is done by the function ScrollWorker() (see code below) that recalls itself via a setTimeout().
Finally use the callback invoked by the scroll event to keep the #scroller position (stored in a variable) updated.
// Position of the `#scroller` element
// (I used two globals that may pollute the global namespace
// that piece of code is just for explanation purpose)
var oldPosition,
newPosition;
// Use transition to perform animations
// You may set this in the stylesheet
$('th').css( { 'transition': 'left 0.5s, top 0.5s' } );
$('td').css( { 'transition': 'left 0.5s, top 0.5s' } );
// Save the initial position
newPosition = $('#scroller').position();
oldPosition = $('#scroller').position();
// Upon scroll just set the position value
iScroll.on('scroll', function() {
newPosition = $('#scroller').position();
} );
// Start the scroll worker
ScrollWorker();
function ScrollWorker() {
// Adjust the layout if position changed (your original code)
if( newPosition.left != oldPosition.left || newPosition.top != oldPosition.top ) {
$('#scroller th:nth-child(1)').css({top: (-newPosition.top), left: (-newPosition.left), position:'relative'});
$('#scroller th:nth-child(n+1)').css({top: (-newPosition.top), position:'relative'});
$('#scroller td:nth-child(1)').css({left: (-newPosition.left), position:'relative'});
// Update the stored position
oldPosition.left = newPosition.left;
oldPosition.top = newPosition.top;
// Let animation complete then check again
// You may adjust the timer value
// The timer value must be higher or equal the transition time
setTimeout( ScrollWorker, 500 );
} else {
// No changes
// Check again after just 0.1secs
setTimeout( ScrollWorker, 100 );
}
}
Here is the Fiddle
I set the Worker pace and the transition time to 0.5 secs. You may adjust the value with higher or lower timing, eventually in a dinamic way based on the number of elements in the table.
Yes! Here are some improvements to the code from your JS Fiddle. You can view my edits at: https://jsfiddle.net/briankueck/u63maywa/
Some suggested improvements are:
Switching position:relative values in the JS layer to position:fixed in the CSS layer.
Shortening the jQuery DOM chains, so that the code doesn't start at the root element & walk all the way through the dom with each $ lookup. The scroller is now the root element. Everything uses .find() off of that element, which creates shorter trees & jQuery can traverse those branches faster.
Moving the logging code out of the DOM & into the console.log. I've added a debugging switch to disable it, as you're looking for the fastest scrolling on the table. If it runs fast enough for you, then you can always re-enable it to see it in the JSFiddle. If you really need to see that on the iPhone, then it can be added into the DOM. Although, it's probably not necessary to see the left & top position values in the iPhone.
Remove all extraneous $ values, which aren't mapped to the jQuery object. Something like $scroller gets confusing with $, as the latter is the jQuery library, but the former isn't.
Switching to ES6 syntax, by using let instead of var will make your code look more modern.
There is a new left calculation in the <th> tag, which you'll want to look at.
The iScroll event listener has been cleaned up. With position:fixed, the top <th> tags only need to have the top property applied to them. The left <td> tags only need to have the left property applied to them. The corner <th> needs to have both the top & left property applied to it.
Remove everything that's unnecessary, like the extraneous HTML tags which were used for logging purposes.
If you really want to go more vanilla, change out the .css() methods for the actual .style.left= -pos.left + 'px'; and .style.top= -pos.top + 'px'; properties in the JS code.
Try using a diff tool like WinMerge or Beyond Compare to compare the code from your version to what's in my edits, so that you can easily see the differences.
Hopefully, this will make the scrolling smoother, as the scroll event doesn't have to process anything that it doesn't need to do... like 5 full DOM traversing look-ups, rather than 3 short-tree searches.
Enjoy! :)
HTML:
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<table id="scroller">
<thead>
</thead>
<tbody>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</body>
CSS:
/* ... only the relevant bits ... */
thead th {
background-color: #99a;
min-width: 120px;
height: 32px;
border: 1px solid #222;
position: fixed; /* New */
z-index: 9;
}
thead th:nth-child(1) {/*first cell in the header*/
border-left: 1px solid #222; /* New: Border fix */
border-right: 2px solid #222; /* New: Border fix */
position: fixed; /* New */
display: block; /*seperates the first cell in the header from the header*/
background-color: #88b;
z-index: 10;
}
JS:
// main code
let debug = false;
$(function(){
let scroller = $('#scroller');
let top = $('<tr/>');
for (var i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
let left = (i === 0) ? 0 : 1;
top.append('<th style="left:' + ((123*i)+left) + 'px;">'+ Math.random().toString(36).substring(7) +'</th>');
}
scroller.find('thead').append(top);
for (let i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
let row = $('<tr/>');
for (let j = 0; j < 100; j++) {
row.append('<td>'+ Math.random().toString(36).substring(7) +'</td>');
}
scroller.find('tbody').append(row);
}
if (debug) console.log('initialize iscroll');
let iScroll = null;
try {
iScroll = new IScroll('#wrapper', {
interactiveScrollbars: true,
scrollbars: true,
scrollX: true,
probeType: 3,
useTransition:false,
bounce:false
});
} catch(e) {
if (debug) console.error(e.name + ":" + e.message + "\n" + e.stack);
}
if (debug) console.log('initialized');
iScroll.on('scroll', function(){
let pos = scroller.position();
if (debug) console.log('pos.left=' + pos.left + ' pos.top=' + pos.top);
// code to hold first row and first column
scroller.find('th').css({top:-pos.top}); // Top Row
scroller.find('th:nth-child(1)').css({left:-pos.left}); // Corner
scroller.find('td:nth-child(1)').css({left:-pos.left}); // 1st Left Column
});
});
Is it necessary that you create your own scroller? Why don't you just style the data in HTML/CSS and just use the overflow attribute? JavaScript needs work on it's ability to adjust framerates. I was using your jFiddle earlier and it worked just fine with the native overflow handler.
Found this in the manual. Probably not what you wanna hear but it's the way it is:
IScroll is a class that needs to be initiated for each scrolling area. There's no limit to the number of iScrolls you can have in each page if not that imposed by the device CPU/Memory.
Try to keep the DOM as simple as possible. iScroll uses the hardware compositing layer but there's a limit to the elements the hardware can handle.
The reason the performance degradation is happening is that your scroll event handler is firing again and again and again instead of waiting for a reasonable and imperceptible interval.
The screenshot shows what happened when I tracked how many times the event handler fired, while scrolling for just a few seconds. The computationally-heavy event handler was fired over 600 times!!! This is more than 60 times per second!!!
It may seem counter-intuitive, but reducing the frequency that the table is updated will vastly increase perceived response times. If your user scrolls for fraction of a second, about 150 milliseconds, and the table is updated ten times, freezing the display during the scrolling, the net result is far worse than if the table were updated only three times and moved fluidly rather than freezing. It is just wasted processor burn to update more times than the browser can handle without freezing.
So, how do you make an event handler that fires at a maximum frequency, for example 25 times per second, even it is triggered much more often, like 100 times per second?
The naive way of doing it is to run a setInterval event. That is better, but horribly inefficient as well. There is a better way of doing it, by setting a delayed event handler, and clearing it on subsequent invocations before setting it again, until the minimum time interval has passed. This way it only runs no more often than at the maximum desired frequency. This is one major case for why the ``clearInterval'' method was invented.
Here is live working code:
https://jsfiddle.net/pgjvf7pb/7/
Note: when refreshing continuously like this, the header column may appear out of position.
I advise to do the update only when the scrolling has paused for about 25ms or so, rather than continuously. This way, it appears to the user that the header column is dynamically calculated as well as being fixed in place, because it appears instantly after scrolling rather than seeming to scroll with the data.
https://jsfiddle.net/5vcqv7nq/2/
The logic is like this:
variables outside your event handler
// stores the scrolling operation for a tiny delay to prevent redundancy
var fresh;
// stores time of last scrolling refresh
var lastfresh = new Date();
operations inside your event handler
// clears redundant scrolling operations before they are applied
if (fresh) clearTimeout(fresh);
var x = function() {
// stores new time of scrolling refresh
lastfresh = new Date();
// perform scrolling update operations here...
};
// refresh instantly if it is more than 50ms out of date
if (new Date() - lastfresh > 50) x();
// otherwise, pause for half of that time to avoid wasted runs
else fresh = setTimeout(x, 25);
Demo: https://jsfiddle.net/pgjvf7pb/7/
Once again, I recommend that you remove the line of code that refreshes the data instantly, and the else condition after that, and simply use one line
fresh = setTimeout(x, 25);
This will appear to instantly calculate the header column the moment any scrolling is finished, and saves even more operations. My second link to JS Fiddle shows what this looks like, here: https://jsfiddle.net/5vcqv7nq/2/

Control sprite animation speed

How can I control the animation speed of a sprite using create JS?
When you press right and left, the sprite will run through the frames... I'd like to leave the fps at 60, but alter how fast the frames are looped through without altering the main game FPS rate.
See a demo here. Press right and left arrow to see.
I thought changing the bmp animation frequency property would do the trick...
bmpAnimation.frequency = 2;
But it did not work...
Or should I be using the jQuery animation?
Also, I noticed that each time I hit a random key, the animation plays 1 frame then goes back to first frame. Why is that?
Thanks!
1) The frequency is a property of the spriteSheet-animation, not the bitmapAnimation itself.
So you would have to set the freuqency in the SpriteSheetData itself(http://www.createjs.com/Docs/EaselJS/classes/SpriteSheet.html) or if you want to set it during runtime you could use:
bmpAnimation.spriteSheet.getAnimation("walk_right").frequency = 2;
Please also note that the frequency will be deprecated in the next version of EaselJS in favor of speed (bit this is in the NEXT version, so just something for you to keep in mind)
2) You are currently calling the gotoAndPlay() every frame (if walking), that means that every frame your animation will be set to the first frame of that animation, you could easily avoid this by using something like:
if ( dir == "right" and bmpAnimation.currentAnimation != "walk_right" ) {
bmpAnimation.gotoAndPlay("walk_right");
}
But a better way would be to only call that method ONCE when you start walking and then again when you stop walking.

change css on scroll event w/ requestAnimation Frame

I want to change the background color of in-viewport elements (using overflow: scroll)
So here was my first attempt:
http://jsfiddle.net/2YeZG/
As you see, there is a brief flicker of the previous color before the new color is painted. Others have had similar problems.
Following the HTML5 rocks instructions, I tried to introduce requestAnimationFrame to fix this problem to no avail:
http://jsfiddle.net/RETbF/
What am I doing wrong here?
Here is a simpler example showing the same problem: http://jsfiddle.net/HJ9ng/
Filed bug with Chromium here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=151880
if it is only the background color, well why don't you just change the parent background color to red and once it scroll just change it to pink?
I change your CSS to that
#dad
{
overflow-y: scroll;
overflow-x: hidden;
width: 100px;
height: 600px;
background-color:red;
}​
I remove some of you Jquery and change it to this
dad.bind('scroll', function() {
dad.css('background-color', 'pink');
});
And I remove this line
iChild.css('backgroundColor', 'red');
But is the Red color it is important that won't work for sure http://jsfiddle.net/2YeZG/5/
I like Manuel's Solution.
But even though I don't get what you're exactly trying to do, I want to point out a few things.
In your fiddle code, I saw that you included Paul Irish's Shim for requestAnimationFrame.
But you never use it.
(It's basically a reliable setTimeOut, nothing else) it's from frame based animations.)
So since you just want to change some CSS properties, I don't see why you would need it. Even if you want transitions, you should rely on CSS transitions.
Other than that your code could look something like
dad.bind('scroll', function() {
dad.css('background-color', 'pink');
eachElemNameHere.css('background-color','randomColor');
});
Also you should ideally not use something like that if you can help it. You should just add and remove class names and add all these properties in your CSS. Makes it work faster.
Also, again I don't quite get it, but you could use the jQuery function to find out each elements' position from the top to have better control.
Your problem seems to be that you only change the background color of the elements which have already been scrolled into view. Your code expects that the browser waits for your code to handle the scroll event before the browser redraws its view. This is most probably not a guarantee given by the HTML spec. That's why it flickers.
What you should do instead is to change the elements which are going to be scrolled into view. This is related to off screen rendering or double buffering as it is called in computer games programming. You build your scene off screen and copy the finished scene to the visible frame buffer.
I modified your first JSFiddle to include a multiplier for the height of the scroll area: http://jsfiddle.net/2YeZG/13/.
dad.bind('scroll', function() {
// new: query multiplier from input field (for demonstration only) and print message
var multiplier = +($("#multiplier")[0].value);
$("#message")[0].innerHTML=(multiplier*100)-100 + "% of screen rendering";
// your original code
var newScrollY = newScrollY = dad.scrollTop();
var isForward = newScrollY > oldScrollY;
var minVal = bSearch(bots, newScrollY, true);
// new: expand covered height by the given multiplier
// multiplier = 1 is similar to your code
// multiplier = 2 would be complete off screen rendering
var newScrollYHt = newScrollY + multiplier * dadHeight;
// your original code (continued)
var maxVal;
for (maxVal = minVal; maxVal < botsLen; maxVal++) {
var nxtTopSide = tops[maxVal];
if (nxtTopSide >= newScrollYHt) {
break;
}
}
maxVal = Math.min(maxVal, botsLen);
$(dadKids.slice(minVal, maxVal)).css('background', 'pink');
});
Your code had a multiplier of 1, meaning that you update the elements which are currently visible (100% of scroll area height). If you set the multiplier to 2, you get complete off screen updates for all your elements. The browser updates enough elements to the new background color so that even a 100% scroll would show updated elements. Since the browser seldom scrolls 100% of the area in one step (depends of the operating system and the scroll method!), it may be sufficient to reduce the multiplier to e.g. 1.5 (meaning 50% off screen rendering). On my machine (Google Chrome, Mac OS X with touch pad) I cannot produce any flicker if the multiplier is 1.7 or above.
BTW: If you do something more complicated than just changing the background color, you should not do it again and again. Instead you should check whether the element has already been updated and perform the change only afterwards.

How do smooth slides work in javascript?

For a while now i have been trying to figure out the algorithms behind smooth slides, fades etc..in javascript. Just to give you an example of what am talking about, I have seen a div with content in it that had a height of 0px and on toggled, it didn't just snap to height, it smoothly and gradually grew to height using some sort of function. What i do know is that the height of this div was being assigned its height value from either a date object that had an interval set or a loop of some sort. I've searched all over the web trying to find tutorials explaining how this works but failed. Can someone please either explain to me how to create my own smooth fades, slides or reference some links that i can read?
PS: I know i can just use jquery, but i want to know how the fades and slides actually work.
It's quite simple actually. All of these animations use a timer (see setInterval) with a short interval, say 100 milliseconds, and every time the timer fires, the property (height or whatever) is changed by a fraction of the total amount instead of all at once.
For example, if you want to slide from a height of 0px to 200px in 1 second, then you could set up a timer that fires every 100 ms and increases the height of the DIV by 20px. That way, in 1 second, the timer would have fired 10 times and the height would be 200px.
A simple example:
function slideOpen(elem, finalHeight, slideTime) {
var count = slideTime * 10; // 10 intervals per second
height = 0, // current height
delta = finalHeight / count; // change in height per interval
var timerId = setInterval(slide, 100);
function slide() {
height += delta;
elem.style.height = height + 'px';
if (--count == 0)
clearInterval(timerId);
}
}
I have never looked at the jQuery code myself, but i'm pretty sure it uses a loop/timeout to increment the top/left/bottom/right css position of the element gradually using the specified easing equation.
You might want to have a look at jQuery source code for the animate() function.
CSS3 makes it trivial.
For non-CSS3 based solution, this is the first Google result for the query "javascript smooth animation": http://www.schillmania.com/content/projects/javascript-animation-2/
I am adding some code from one of my projects to move the div right
belolw xs_tuck() will be called till finalleftpositionval reaches
This code makes the div move to right.
if(xs_endpt<finalLeftPositionVal){
xs_endpt+=5;
xs_pDiv2.style.left=xs_endpt;
setTimeout("xs_tuck();",20);
}

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