10 principles for smooth web animations

1. Don’t change any properties besides opacity or transform!
2. Hide content in plain sight with opacity: 0; and pointer-events: none;
3. Don’t animate everything at the same time
4. Slightly increasing transition delays makes it easy to choreograph motion
5. Use a global multiplier to design in slow motion (and then speed everything up later)
6. Take videos of your UI and replay them to get a valuable third-person perspective
7. Network activity can cause lag
8. Don’t bind directly to scroll
9. Test on mobile early, and often
10. Test frequently on multiple devices

10 principles for smooth web animations →