Smooth animation using DHTML

Quick introduction

Since everything linked from here totals around 150kB I'll try to be short. The quickie version of the report is of course found in the summary, so read that if you're in a hurry. There's some interesting results to be found in the various test results though, so if you're serious about developing DHTML animations you should probably read the whole thing.

I've tried to make this easy to read, fast to download and user friendly, so there's only simple HTML here. Hopefully you'll like the experience. Drop me a line if there's anything you've read that you'd like to comment.

Table of Contents

Summary

Part 1, The Introduction

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
  • What is DHTML?
  • What is a layer?
  • Cross-browser issues
  • Moving a layer
  • Animating a layer's movement

Part 2 - Creating the test

• My test plan
• Accuracy problems?
• The actual test code
• Variations

Part 3 - First tests

• for()-loop test
  • Test setup
  • Test results
• Why not use the for()-loop?
• setTimeout() animation test
  • Test setup
  • Test results
• Comments

Part 4 - setInterval()

• Is setInterval() the solution?
• setInterval() speed test
  • Test setup
  • Test results
• Is setInterval() useless?
• setInterval() animation test
  • Test setup
  • Test results
• Comments

Part 5 - myDelay()

Part 6 - Summing up and concluding

• Is developing DHTML animations any use at all?
• DHTML developer setup
• Solutions other than DHTML
• The future of DHTML animation

References

• General references
• Specification references

All tests

• Date() creation test
• setTimeout animation test
• setInterval animation test
• setInterval speed test
• for()-loop test
• myDelay() test
• DirectAnimation test

Summary of systems used & test results

Revision history

Version 1.0.1, 1999-11-16

Updated all animation tests with a small change in begin_test() to correctly get the number of times to run the test. Did not affect test results at all.

Version 1.0, 1999-11-12

Released the whole report.

Other things I do

Curious about what else I've got to offer? Here's the links to the rest of the site: