It appears both IE 10 and Firefox snaps elements to whole pixels when animating their position using translate 2d transform in a css keyframe animation.
Chrome and Safari does not, which looks a lot better when animating subtle movements.
The animation is done the following way:
@keyframes bobbingAnim {
0% {
transform: translate(0px, 0px);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
50% {
transform: translate(0px, 12px);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
100% {
transform: translate(0px, 0px);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
}
Here's an example of what I mean:
http://jsfiddle.net/yZgTM/.
Just open it in Chrome and IE 10 (or Firefox) and you should notice the difference in smoothness of the motion.
I realise there might be many factors affecting this behaviour such as if the element is drawn with hardware acceleration or not.
Does anyone know of a fix to try to force browsers to always draw the elements on subpixels?
I found this similar question, but the answer was to animate using a translate transform, which is exactly what I'm doing:
CSS3 Transitions 'snap to pixel'.
Update:
After playing around a bit I found a fix for Firefox, doesn't do anything in IE 10 though. The trick is to scale down the element ever so slightly and use translate3d with a 1px offset in the Z-axis:
@keyframes bobbingAnim {
0% {
transform: scale(0.999, 0.999) translate3d(0px, 0px, 1px);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
50% {
transform: scale(0.999, 0.999) translate3d(0px, 12px, 1px);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
100% {
transform: scale(0.999, 0.999) translate3d(0px, 0px, 1px);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
}
I love your question!
Good job in noticining the pixel-snap in firefox and IE10.
I've researched this subject a while ago and I advise you to check the GSAP forums, as they containt a lot of useful information on web animations.
Here's a topic regarding IE10 pixel-snap issue.
What you need to do is add a minimal rotation to the element, so that IE and Firefox will redraw it in a different way - which will stop pixel-snap for good :)
Tyr this:
@keyframes bobbingAnim {
0% {
transform: translate(0px, 0px) rotateZ(0.001deg);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
50% {
transform: translate(0px, 12px) rotateZ(0.001deg);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
100% {
transform: translate(0px, 0px) rotateZ(0.001deg);
animation-timing-function:ease-in-out
}
}
@Nemanja is correct you will find that if you tweak the speed you will see better results this is fairly typical with css animations. Also it doesn't really make a difference in this case if you enable hardware acceleration. I tidied up the code a little bit and ran it without any issues, i do not have ie10; However, I have 11. You may have to just remove the second transform of translateZ if it doesn't run in 10
body {
background-color: #ccc;
}
.bobbing {
position: absolute;
animation: bobbingAnim ease-in-out .5s infinite;
-moz-animation: bobbingAnim ease-in-out .5s infinite;
-webkit-animation: bobbingAnim ease-in-out .5s infinite;
}
.bobbing.text {
font-size: 50px;
color: #000;
left: 30px;
top: 30px;
}
.bobbing.image {
left: 30px;
top: 150px;
background: url(http://placehold.it/300x100/aa0000&text=Bobbing+image) 50% 50% no-repeat;
width: 310px;
height: 110px;
}
@keyframes bobbingAnim {
50% {
transform: translate(0, 12px) translateZ(0);
}
}
@-webkit-keyframes bobbingAnim {
50% {
-webkit-transform: translate3d(0, 12px, 0);
}
}
@-moz-keyframes bobbingAnim {
50% {
-moz-transform: translate3d(0, 12px, 0);
}
}
There cant be half a pixel movement, there is no such thing.
Your problem is the speed and smoothness of the animation, not the "pixel snapping".