Copyright © 2013 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.
This CSS module describes a way for authors to animate the values of CSS properties over time, using keyframes. The behavior of these keyframe animations can be controlled by specifying their duration, number of repeats, and repeating behavior.
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Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
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This document was produced by the CSS Working Group (part of the Style Activity).
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Some changes since the draft of April 2012:
!important.
animation-name
’ Property
animation-duration
’
Property
animation-timing-function
’
Property
animation-iteration-count
’
Property
animation-direction
’
Property
animation-play-state
’
Property
animation-delay
’ Property
animation-fill-mode
’
Property
animation
’ Shorthand
Property
This section is not normative.
CSS Transitions [CSS3-TRANSITIONS] provide a way to interpolate CSS property values when they change as a result of underlying property changes. This provides an easy way to do simple animation, but the start and end states of the animation are controlled by the existing property values, and transitions provide little control to the author on how the animation progresses.
This proposal introduces defined animations, in which the author can specify the changes in CSS properties over time as a set of keyframes. Animations are similar to transitions in that they change the presentational value of CSS properties over time. The principal difference is that while transitions trigger implicitly when property values change, animations are explicitly executed when the animation properties are applied. Because of this, animations require explicit values for the properties being animated. These values are specified using animation keyframes, described below.
Many aspects of the animation can be controlled, including how many times the animation iterates, whether or not it alternates between the begin and end values, and whether or not the animation should be running or paused. An animation can also delay its start time.
This specification follows the CSS property definition conventions from [CSS21]. Value types not defined in this specification are defined in CSS Level 2 Revision 1 [CSS21]. Other CSS modules may expand the definitions of these value types: for example [CSS3VAL], when combined with this module, expands the definition of the <length> value type as used in this specification.
In addition to the property-specific values listed in their definitions,
all properties defined in this specification also accept the ‘initial
’ and ‘inherit
’ keyword as their property value. For
readability it has not been repeated explicitly.
CSS Animations affect computed property values. During the execution of an animation, the computed value for a property is controlled by the animation. This overrides the value specified in the normal styling system. Animations override all normal rules, but are overriden by !important rules.
If at one point in time there are multiple animations specifying
behavior for the same property, the animation whose name occurs last in
the value of ‘animation-name
’ will override the other
animations at that point.
An animation does not affect the computed value before the application of the animation, before the animation delay has expired, and after the end of the animation.
The diagram above shows how property values are computed. The intrinsic style is shown at the top of the diagram. The computed value is derived from intrinsic style at the times when an animation is not running and also when an animation is delayed (see below for specification of animation delay). During an animation, the computed style is derived from the animated value.
The start time of an animation is the latter of two moments: the time at which the style is resolved that specifies the animation, or the time the document's load event is fired. Therefore, an animation specified in the document style sheet will begin at the document load. An animation specified on an element by modifying the style after the document has loaded will start when the style is resolved. That may be immediately in the case of a pseudo style rule such as hover, or may be when the scripting engine returns control to the browser (in the case of style applied by script).
An animation applies to an element if the element has a value for ‘animation-name
’
that references a valid keyframes rule. Once an animation has started it
continues until it ends or the ‘animation-name
’ is removed. The values used
for the keyframes and animation properties are snapshotted at the time the
animation starts. Changing them during the execution of the animation has
no effect. Note also that changing the value of ‘animation-name
’
does not necessarily restart an animation (e.g., if a list of animations
are applied and one is removed from the list, only that animation will
stop; The other animations will continue). In order to restart an
animation, it must be removed then reapplied.
The end of the animation is defined by the combination of the ‘animation-duration
’, ‘animation-iteration-count
’ and ‘animation-fill-mode
’ properties.
div { animation-name: diagonal-slide; animation-duration: 5s; animation-iteration-count: 10; } @keyframes diagonal-slide { from { left: 0; top: 0; } to { left: 100px; top: 100px; } }
This will produce an animation that moves an element from (0, 0) to (100px, 100px) over five seconds and repeats itself nine times (for a total of ten iterations).
Setting the display property to ‘none
’
will terminate any running animation applied to the element and its
descendants. If an element has a display of ‘none
’, updating display to a value other than
‘none
’ will start all animations applied
to the element by the ‘animation-name
’ property, as well as all
animations applied to descendants with display other than ‘none
’.
While authors can use animations to create dynamically changing content, dynamically changing content can lead to seizures in some users. For information on how to avoid content that can lead to seizures, see Guideline 2.3: Seizures: Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures ([WCAG20]).
Keyframes are used to specify the values for the animating properties at various points during the animation. The keyframes specify the behavior of one cycle of the animation; the animation may iterate one or more times.
Keyframes are specified using a specialized CSS at-rule. A @keyframes
rule consists of the keyword "@keyframes", followed by an identifier
giving a name for the animation (which will be referenced using ‘animation-name
’),
followed by a set of style rules (delimited by curly braces).
The keyframe selector for a keyframe
style rule consists of a comma-separated list of percentage values or the
keywords ‘from
’ or ‘to
’. The selector is used to specify the
percentage along the duration of the animation that the keyframe
represents. The keyframe itself is specified by the block of property
values declared on the selector. The keyword ‘from
’ is equivalent to the value ‘0%
’. The keyword ‘to
’
is equivalent to the value ‘100%
’. Note that the percentage unit specifier must be used on
percentage values. Therefore, ‘0
’ is an invalid
keyframe selector.
If a ‘0%
’ or ‘from
’ keyframe is not specified, then the user agent
constructs a ‘0%
’ keyframe using the computed
values of the properties being animated. If a ‘100%
’ or ‘to
’ keyframe is
not specified, then the user agent constructs a ‘100%
’ keyframe using the computed values of the
properties being animated. If a keyframe selector specifies negative
percentage values or values higher than 100%, then the keyframe will be
ignored.
The keyframe declaration block
for a keyframe rule consists of properties and values. Properties that are
unable to be animated are ignored in these rules, with the exception of
‘animation-timing-function
’, the behavior of
which is described below. In addition, keyframe rule declarations
qualified with !important are ignored.
Need to describe what happens if a property is not present in all keyframes.
The @keyframes rule that is used by an animation will be the last one
encountered in sorted rules order that matches the name of the animation
specified by the ‘animation-name
’ property. @keyframes rules do
not cascade; therefore, an animation will never derive keyframes from more
than one @keyframes rule.
Note that since empty @keyframes rule are valid, they may hide the keyframes of those preceding animation definitions with a matching name.
To determine the set of keyframes, all of the values in the selectors are sorted in increasing order by time. If there are any duplicates, then the last keyframe specified inside the @keyframes rule will be used to provide the keyframe information for that time. There is no cascading within a @keyframes rule if multiple keyframes specify the same keyframe selector values.
If a property is not specified for a keyframe, or is specified but invalid, the animation of that property proceeds as if that keyframe did not exist. Conceptually, it is as if a set of keyframes is constructed for each property that is present in any of the keyframes, and an animation is run independently for each property.
@keyframes wobble { 0% { left: 100px; } 40% { left: 150px; } 60% { left: 75px; } 100% { left: 100px; } }
Four keyframes are specified for the animation named "wobble". In the
first keyframe, shown at the beginning of the animation cycle, the value
of the ‘left
’ property being animated is
‘100px
’. By 40% of the animation duration,
‘left
’ has animated to ‘150px
’. At 60% of the animation duration, ‘left
’ has animated back to ‘75px
’. At the end of the animation cycle, the value of
‘left
’ has returned to ‘100px
’. The diagram below shows the state of the
animation if it were given a duration of ‘10s
’.
The following is the grammar for the keyframes rule.
keyframes_rule: KEYFRAMES_SYM S+ IDENT S* '{' S* keyframes_blocks '}' S*; keyframes_blocks: [ keyframe_selector '{' S* declaration? [ ';' S* declaration? ]* '}' S* ]* ; keyframe_selector: [ FROM_SYM | TO_SYM | PERCENTAGE ] S* [ ',' S* [ FROM_SYM | TO_SYM | PERCENTAGE ] S* ]*; @{K}{E}{Y}{F}{R}{A}{M}{E}{S} {return KEYFRAMES_SYM;} {F}{R}{O}{M} {return FROM_SYM;} {T}{O} {return TO_SYM;}
A keyframe style rule may also declare the timing function that is to be used as the animation moves to the next keyframe.
@keyframes bounce { from { top: 100px; animation-timing-function: ease-out; } 25% { top: 50px; animation-timing-function: ease-in; } 50% { top: 100px; animation-timing-function: ease-out; } 75% { top: 75px; animation-timing-function: ease-in; } to { top: 100px; } }
Five keyframes are specified for the animation named "bounce". Between
the first and second keyframe (i.e., between 0% and 25%) an ‘ease-out
’ timing function is used. Between the second
and third keyframe (i.e., between 25% and 50%) an ‘ease-in
’ timing function is used. And so on. The
effect will appear as an element that moves up the page ‘50px
’, slowing down as it reaches its highest point
then speeding up as it falls back to ‘100px
’.
The second half of the animation behaves in a similar manner, but only
moves the element ‘25px
’ up the page.
A timing function specified on the "to" or 100% keyframe is ignored.
See the ‘animation-timing-function
’ property for more
information.
animation-name
’
Property The ‘animation-name
’ property defines a list of
animations that apply. Each name is used to select the keyframe at-rule
that provides the property values for the animation. If the name does not
match any keyframe at-rule, there are no properties to be animated and the
animation will not execute. Furthermore, if the animation name is ‘none
’ then there will be no animation. This can be used
to override any animations coming from the cascade. If multiple animations
are attempting to modify the same property, then the animation closest to
the end of the list of names wins.
Each animation listed by name should have a
corresponding value for the other animation properties listed below. If
the lists of values for the other animation properties do not have the
same length, the length of the ‘animation-name
’ list determines the number of
items in each list examined when starting animations. The lists are
matched up from the first value: excess values at the end are not used. If
one of the other properties doesn't have enough comma-separated values to
match the number of values of ‘animation-name
’, the UA must calculate its
used value by repeating the list of values until there are enough. This
truncation or repetition does not affect the computed value. Note: This is analogous to the behavior of the ‘background-*
’properties, with ‘background-image
’ analogous to ‘animation-name
’.
Name: | animation-name |
---|---|
Value: | <single-animation-name> [
‘, ’ <single-animation-name> ]*
|
Initial: | ‘none ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | As specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
animation-duration
’ Property The ‘animation-duration
’ property defines the
length of time that an animation takes to complete one cycle.
Name: | animation-duration |
---|---|
Value: | <time> [, <time>]* |
Initial: | ‘0s ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | as specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
The initial value is ‘0s
’, meaning that the
animation takes no time. When the duration is ‘0s
’ ‘animation-fill-mode
’ still applies, so an
animation that fills backwards will show the value of the 0% keyframe
during any delay period, and an animation that fills forwards will retain
the value specified at the 100% keyframe, even if the animation was
instantaneous. Also, animation events are still fired. A negative ‘animation-duration
’ value renders the
declaration invalid.
animation-timing-function
’ Property The ‘animation-timing-function
’ property describes
how the animation will progress over one cycle of its duration. See the
‘transition-timing-function
’ property [CSS3-TRANSITIONS] for a
complete description of timing function calculation.
Name: | animation-timing-function |
---|---|
Value: | <single-timing-function> [ ‘, ’ <single-timing-function> ]*
|
Initial: | ‘ease ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | as specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
All the valid values of ‘<single-timing-function>
’ are defined by the
‘transition-timing-function
’ property [CSS3-TRANSITIONS].
For a keyframed animation, the ‘animation-timing-function
’ applies between
keyframes, not over the entire animation. For example, in the case of an
‘ease-in-out
’ timing function, an animation
will ease in at the start of the keyframe and ease out at the end of the
keyframe. An ‘animation-timing-function
’ defined within a
keyframe block applies to that keyframe, otherwise the timing function
specified for the animation is used.
animation-iteration-count
’ Property The ‘animation-iteration-count
’ property specifies
the number of times an animation cycle is played. The initial value is
‘1
’, meaning the animation will play from
beginning to end once. A value of ‘infinite
’
will cause the animation to repeat forever. Non-integer numbers will cause
the animation to end part-way through a cycle. Negative values of ‘animation-iteration-count
’ are invalid. This
property is often used in conjunction an ‘animation-direction
’ value of ‘alternate
’, which will
cause the animation to play in reverse on alternate cycles.
Name: | animation-iteration-count |
---|---|
Value: | <single-animation-iteration-count>
[ ‘, ’ <single-animation-iteration-count>
]*
|
Initial: | ‘1 ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | as specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
animation-direction
’ Property The ‘animation-direction
’ property defines whether
or not the animation should play in reverse on some or all cycles. When an
animation is played in reverse the timing functions are also reversed. For
example, when played in reverse an ease-in animation would appear to be an
ease-out animation.
Name: | animation-direction |
---|---|
Value: | <single-animation-direction>
[ ‘, ’ <single-animation-direction>
]*
|
Initial: | ‘normal ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | as specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
Note that for the purpose of determining whether an iteration is even or odd, iterations start counting from 1.
animation-play-state
’ Property The ‘animation-play-state
’ property defines whether
the animation is running or paused. A running animation can be paused by
setting this property to ‘paused
’. To continue
running a paused animation this property can be set to ‘running
’. A paused animation will continue to display
the current value of the animation in a static state, as if the time of
the animation is constant. When a paused animation is resumed, it restarts
from the current value, not necessarily from the beginning of the
animation.
Name: | animation-play-state |
---|---|
Value: | <single-animation-play-state>
[ ‘, ’ <single-animation-play-state>
]*
|
Initial: | ‘running ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | as specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
animation-delay
’
Property The ‘animation-delay
’ property defines when the
animation will start. It allows an animation to begin execution some time
after it is applied. An ‘animation-delay
’ value of ‘0s
’ means the animation will execute as soon as it is
applied. Otherwise, the value specifies an offset from the moment the
animation is applied, and the animation will delay execution by that
offset.
If the value for ‘animation-delay
’ is a negative time offset
then the animation will execute the moment it is applied, but will appear
to have begun execution at the specified offset. That is, the animation
will appear to begin part-way through its play cycle. In the case where an
animation has implied starting values and a negative ‘animation-delay
’, the starting values are
taken from the moment the animation is applied.
Name: | animation-delay |
---|---|
Value: | <time> [, <time>]* |
Initial: | ‘0s ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | as specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
animation-fill-mode
’ Property The ‘animation-fill-mode
’ property defines what
values are applied by the animation outside the time it is executing. By
default, an animation will not affect property values between the time it
is applied (the ‘animation-name
’ property is set on an element)
and the time it begins execution (which is determined by the ‘animation-delay
’
property). Also, by default an animation does not affect property values
after the animation ends (determined by the ‘animation-duration
’ property). The ‘animation-fill-mode
’ property can override
this behavior.
If the value for ‘animation-fill-mode
’ is ‘backwards
’, then the animation will apply the property
values defined in the keyframe that will start the first iteration of the
animation, during the period defined by ‘animation-delay
’. These are either the values
of the ‘from
’ keyframe (when ‘animation-direction
’ is ‘normal
’ or ‘alternate
’) or those of the
‘to
’ keyframe (when ‘animation-direction
’ is ‘reverse
’ or ‘alternate-reverse
’).
If the value for ‘animation-fill-mode
’ is ‘forwards
’, then after the animation ends (as determined
by its ‘animation-iteration-count
’), the animation
will apply the property values for the time the animation ended. When
‘animation-iteration-count
’ is an integer
greater than zero, the values applied will be those for the end of the
last completed iteration of the animation (rather than the values for the
start of the iteration that would be next). When ‘animation-iteration-count
’ is zero, the values
applied will be those that would start the first iteration (just as when
‘animation-fill-mode
’ is ‘backwards
’).
If the value for ‘animation-fill-mode
’ is ‘both
’, then the animation will follow the rules for
both ‘forwards
’ and ‘backwards
’. That is, it will extend the animation
properties in both directions.
Name: | animation-fill-mode |
---|---|
Value: | <single-animation-fill-mode>
[ ‘, ’ <single-animation-fill-mode>
]*
|
Initial: | ‘none ’
|
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | no |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | as specified |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
animation
’
Shorthand Property The ‘animation
’ shorthand property is a
comma-separated list of animation definitions, each of which combines
seven of the animation properties into a single component value.
Name: | animation |
---|---|
Value: | <single-animation> [ ‘, ’ <single-animation> ]*
|
Initial: | see individual properties |
Applies To: | all elements, ::before and ::after pseudo-elements |
Inherited: | see individual properties |
Animatable: | no |
Percentages: | N/A |
Media: | visual |
Computed Value: | see individual properties |
Canonical Order: | per grammar |
Note that order is important within each animation definition: the first value that can be parsed as a <time> is assigned to the animation-duration, and the second value that can be parsed as a <time> is assigned to animation-delay.
An alternative proposal is to accept the font shorthand approach of using a "/" character between the values of the same type. e.g. 2s/4s would mean a duration of 2 seconds and a delay of 4 seconds.
Need to also explain how order is important in terms of animation-name versus keywords, and probably also adjust the canonical order to match.
Several animation related events are available through the DOM Event
system. The start and end of an animation, and the end of each
iteration of an animation, all generate DOM events. An element can have
multiple properties being animated simultaneously. This can occur either
with a single ‘animation-name
’ value with keyframes
containing multiple properties, or with multiple ‘animation-name
’
values. For the purposes of events, each ‘animation-name
’
specifies a single animation. Therefore an event will be generated for
each ‘animation-name
’ value and not necessarily for
each property being animated.
Any animation for which both a valid keyframe rule and a non-zero duration are defined will run and generate events; this includes animations with empty keyframe rules.
The time the animation has been running is sent with each event
generated. This allows the event handler to determine the current
iteration of a looping animation or the current position of an alternating
animation. This time does not include any time the animation was in the
‘paused
’ play state.
AnimationEvent
The AnimationEvent interface provides specific contextual information associated with Animation events.
[Constructor(DOMString type, optional AnimationEventInit animationEventInitDict)] interface AnimationEvent : Event { readonly attribute DOMString animationName; readonly attribute float elapsedTime; readonly attribute DOMString pseudoElement; }; dictionary AnimationEventInit : EventInit { DOMString animationName; float elapsedTime; DOMString pseudoElement; }
animationName
of type DOMString
, readonly
animation-name
’ property of the animation
that fired the event.
elapsedTime
of
type float
, readonly
animation-delay
’, in which case the event
will be fired with an elapsedTime
of (-1 *
delay).
pseudoElement
of type DOMString
, readonly
AnimationEvent(type,
animationEventInitDict)
is an event
constructor.
AnimationEvent
The different types of Animation events that can occur are:
animationstart
event
occurs at the start of the animation. If there is an ‘animation-delay
’ then this event will fire
once the delay period has expired. A negative delay will cause the event
to fire with an elapsedTime
equal to
the absolute value of the delay.
animationend
event
occurs when the animation finishes.
animationiteration
event occurs at the end of each iteration of an animation, except when an
animationend
event would fire at
the same time. This means that this event does not occur for animations
with an iteration count of one or less.
CSS animation is exposed to the CSSOM through a pair of new interfaces describing the keyframes.
CSSRule
The following 2 rule types are added to the CSSRule interface. They provide identification for the new keyframe and keyframes rules.
interface CSSRule { ... const unsigned short KEYFRAMES_RULE = 7; const unsigned short KEYFRAME_RULE = 8; ... };
CSSKeyframeRule
The CSSKeyframeRule interface represents the style rule for a single key.
interface CSSKeyframeRule : CSSRule { attribute DOMString keyText; readonly attribute CSSStyleDeclaration style; };
keyText
of type
DOMString
from
’ and
‘to
’ keywords map to ‘0%
’ and ‘100%
’,
respectively.
style
of type
CSSStyleDeclaration
CSSKeyframesRule
The CSSKeyframesRule interface represents a complete set of keyframes for a single animation.
interface CSSKeyframesRule : CSSRule { attribute DOMString name; readonly attribute CSSRuleList cssRules; void appendRule(in DOMString rule); void deleteRule(in DOMString key); CSSKeyframeRule findRule(in DOMString key); };
name
of type
DOMString
animation-name
’
property.cssRules
of type
CSSRuleList
appendRule
methodThe appendRule method appends the passed CSSKeyframeRule into the list at the passed key.
Parameters:
rule
of type DOMString
@keyframes
’ rule.
No Return Value
No Exceptions
deleteRule
methodThe deleteRule method deletes the CSSKeyframeRule with the passed key. If a rule with this key does not exist, the method does nothing.
Parameters:
key
of type DOMString
No Return Value
No Exceptions
findRule
method The findRule
method returns the rule with a key matching
the passed key. If no such rule exists, a null value is returned.
Parameters:
key
of type DOMString
Return Value:
CSSKeyframeRule
No Exceptions
Thanks especially to the feedback from Tab Atkins, Carine Bournez, Estelle Weyl, and all the rest of the www-style community.
Property | Values | Initial | Applies to | Inh. | Percentages | Media |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
animation | <single-animation> [ ‘,’ <single-animation> ]* | see individual properties | see individual properties | N/A | visual | |
animation-delay | <time> [, <time>]* | ‘0s’ | no | N/A | visual | |
animation-direction | <single-animation-direction> [ ‘,’ <single-animation-direction> ]* | ‘normal’ | no | N/A | visual | |
animation-duration | <time> [, <time>]* | ‘0s’ | no | N/A | visual | |
animation-fill-mode | <single-animation-fill-mode> [ ‘,’ <single-animation-fill-mode> ]* | ‘none’ | no | N/A | visual | |
animation-iteration-count | <single-animation-iteration-count> [ ‘,’ <single-animation-iteration-count> ]* | ‘1’ | no | N/A | visual | |
animation-name | <single-animation-name> [ ‘,’ <single-animation-name> ]* | ‘none’ | no | N/A | visual | |
animation-play-state | <single-animation-play-state> [ ‘,’ <single-animation-play-state> ]* | ‘running’ | no | N/A | visual | |
animation-timing-function | <single-timing-function> [ ‘,’ <single-timing-function> ]* | ‘ease’ | no | N/A | visual |