Re:Where are all the animated SVGs?
by dredmorbius on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @11:06PM
(#22305651)
I can think of a small set of cases where animations are useful. Icons, not directly being acted on are NOT those. Wholehearted agreement with you.
Among the exceptions:
- Sensory feedback. A hue/shade change on hover, and on click, can be useful. For action commands (as @Animats describes) some indication of the action performed can be useful.
- Pending / in-process actions. If you've kicked off something that takes more than a second or so to complete, then a subtle animation indicating activity can be useful. "Loading" animations fall under this. Though a first consideration should be to not require pending actions.
- Highlighting associated context, especially in help / support scenarios. If you're describing an icon, then, yes, go ahead and have it animate then and only then as a finding aid.
- Data visualisations. No, not icons, but presentations showing some level of change that can be represented as in time. Here, SVGs can be useful (though also abused). Interactive charts, animations, etc., when directly engaged with (animate-on-hover is a CSS hack I've long applied to GIFs, though that's achieved by rendering all GIFs tansparent unless hovered).
But the whole notion that icons should sit spinning on your page when you're doing nothing with them? Nope nope nope nope NOPE!!!
If sites start doing that routinely, I'll simply block SVGs on them. Breakage be damned.
(TFA itself was virtually unreadable for me for just this reason.)
Among the exceptions:
- Sensory feedback. A hue/shade change on hover, and on click, can be useful. For action commands (as @Animats describes) some indication of the action performed can be useful.
- Pending / in-process actions. If you've kicked off something that takes more than a second or so to complete, then a subtle animation indicating activity can be useful. "Loading" animations fall under this. Though a first consideration should be to not require pending actions.
- Highlighting associated context, especially in help / support scenarios. If you're describing an icon, then, yes, go ahead and have it animate then and only then as a finding aid.
- Data visualisations. No, not icons, but presentations showing some level of change that can be represented as in time. Here, SVGs can be useful (though also abused). Interactive charts, animations, etc., when directly engaged with (animate-on-hover is a CSS hack I've long applied to GIFs, though that's achieved by rendering all GIFs tansparent unless hovered).
But the whole notion that icons should sit spinning on your page when you're doing nothing with them? Nope nope nope nope NOPE!!!
If sites start doing that routinely, I'll simply block SVGs on them. Breakage be damned.
(TFA itself was virtually unreadable for me for just this reason.)