On a Mac, if you hold the Shift key and perform an action that involves animation, it will slow down the animation. For example, hold Shift and minimise a window. This effect is described in various places (e.g. YouTube, Apple - StackExchange, The Unofficial Apple Weblog).
It would be nice to slow down CSS animations/transitions in a similar way. Is there a way to achieve this (apart from simply tweaking the animation-duration value in the CSS)?
You could combine some javascript and CSS to accomplish the effect on a consistent basis, meaning you won't have to go into your code anymore. Heres the code I tried:
function keydown(event){
if(event.which == 16) document.body.className = "slowmotion";
}
function keyup(event){
document.body.className = "";
}
if (window.addEventListener) {
window.addEventListener('keydown', keydown, false);
window.addEventListener('keyup', keyup, false);
} else if (window.attachEvent) {
window.attachEvent('keydown', keydown);
window.attachEvent('keyup', keyup);
}
And heres the CSS:
@keyframes move {
0% {left: 0}
50% {left: 100%}
100% {left: 0}
}
@-webkit-keyframes move {
0% {left: 0}
50% {left: 100%}
100% {left: 0}
}
body > div {
position: absolute;
background: red;
width: 50px;
height: 50px;
background: red;
-webkit-animation: move 4000ms infinite;
animation: move 4000ms infinite;
}
body.slowmotion * {
-webkit-animation-duration: 8000ms !important;
animation-duration: 8000ms !important;
}
And the HTML:
<div>MOVING</div>
What we're doing here is adding a class to the body to indicate we want our duration value overwritten. It will not do it immediately (in Safari it restart the animation) [EDIT: The animation does not get restarted, but gets recalculated (i.e. it reverts to where it would have been in if the other animation had been ongoing)], but it does allow for modification that way. You can even do it for elements with different speeds by doing .slowmotion #myElementID and amending the duration there. Make sure to always include the important, as the class is only triggered when the key is pressed and HAS to overwrite anyway.
Chrome and Firefox developer tools now support slowing down of many kinds of animations.
Chrome:
In the 'Styles' tab of DevTools, look for an 'Animations' icon that opens up the Animations Inspector. More info:
- Chrome DevTools Animation Inspector
- New animation controls in Chrome Canary
Firefox:
- See documentation on working with animations