Table of Contents for
Mastering PostCSS for Web Design

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition Mastering PostCSS for Web Design by Alex Libby Published by Packt Publishing, 2016
  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Mastering PostCSS for Web Design
  4. Mastering PostCSS for Web Design
  5. Credits
  6. About the Author
  7. About the Reviewer
  8. www.PacktPub.com
  9. Preface
  10. What you need for this book
  11. Who this book is for
  12. Conventions
  13. Reader feedback
  14. Customer support
  15. 1. Introducing PostCSS
  16. Introducing PostCSS
  17. Setting up a development environment
  18. Creating a simple example using PostCSS
  19. Linting code using plugins
  20. Exploring how PostCSS works
  21. Summary
  22. 2. Creating Variables and Mixins
  23. Creating a hover effect example
  24. Transitioning to using PostCSS
  25. Adding variable support to PostCSS
  26. Updating our hover effect demo
  27. Setting the order of plugins
  28. Creating mixins with PostCSS
  29. Looping content with PostCSS
  30. Summary
  31. 3. Nesting Rules
  32. Navigating through pages
  33. Transitioning to using PostCSS plugins
  34. Exploring the pitfalls of nesting
  35. Making the switch to BEM
  36. Exploring our changes in more detail
  37. Summary
  38. 4. Building Media Queries
  39. Exploring custom media queries in PostCSS
  40. Making images responsive
  41. Adding responsive text support
  42. Optimizing media queries
  43. Retrofitting support for older browsers
  44. Moving away from responsive design
  45. Taking things further with CSS4
  46. Summary
  47. 5. Managing Colors, Images, and Fonts
  48. Managing fonts with PostCSS
  49. Creating image sprites
  50. Working with SVG in PostCSS
  51. Adding support for WebP images
  52. Manipulating colors and color palettes
  53. Creating color functions with PostCSS
  54. Summary
  55. 6. Creating Grids
  56. Creating an example with Bourbon Neat
  57. Exploring the grid plugins in PostCSS
  58. Transitioning to using PostCSS-Neat
  59. Creating a site using Neat and PostCSS
  60. Adding responsive capabilities
  61. Summary
  62. 7. Animating Elements
  63. Moving away from jQuery
  64. Making use of pre-built libraries
  65. Switching to using SASS
  66. Making the switch to PostCSS
  67. Exploring plugin options within PostCSS
  68. Updating code to use PostCSS
  69. Creating a demo in PostCSS
  70. Optimizing our animations
  71. Using our own animation plugin
  72. Summary
  73. 8. Creating PostCSS Plugins
  74. Dissecting the architecture of a standard plugin
  75. Creating an transition plugin
  76. Building a custom font plugin
  77. Simplifying the development process
  78. Guidelines for plugin building
  79. Making the plugin available for use
  80. Summary
  81. 9. Working with Shortcuts, Fallbacks, and Packs
  82. Exploring plugin packs for PostCSS
  83. Adding shortcuts with Rucksack
  84. Linting and optimizing your code
  85. Providing fallback support
  86. Summary
  87. 10. Building a Custom Processor
  88. Exploring our processor
  89. Dissecting issues with our processor
  90. Optimizing the output
  91. Adding reload capabilities
  92. Extending our processor further
  93. Testing the final pre-processor
  94. Getting started with some hints and tips
  95. Introducing the CSStyle library
  96. Summary
  97. 11. Manipulating Custom Syntaxes
  98. Preparing our environment
  99. Implementing custom syntax plugins
  100. Parsing CSS
  101. Formatting the output with the API
  102. Highlighting our syntax code
  103. Summary
  104. 12. Mixing Preprocessors
  105. Exploring the conversion process
  106. Introducing the Pleeease library
  107. Compiling with other preprocessors
  108. Using the PreCSS library
  109. Converting a WordPress installation
  110. Setting up our environment
  111. Considering the conversion process
  112. Making changes to our code
  113. Compiling and testing the changes
  114. Summary
  115. 13. Troubleshooting PostCSS Issues
  116. Exploring some common issues
  117. Getting help from others
  118. Summary
  119. 14. Preparing for the Future
  120. Converting CSS4 styles for use
  121. Supporting future syntax with cssnext
  122. Creating plugins to provide extra CSS4 support
  123. Summary
  124. Index

Chapter 7. Animating Elements

A question: if you had the choice of three websites: one static, one with badly done animation, and one which has been enhanced with subtle use of animation, which would you choose? Well, my hope is the answer to that question should be number three: animation can really make a site stand out if done well, or fail miserably if done badly!

So far, our content has been relatively static, save for the use of media queries. It's time, though, to take a look at how PostCSS can help make animating content a little easier. We'll begin with a quick recap on the basics of animation, before exploring the route to moving away from pure animation, through to SASS, and finally, across to PostCSS. We will cover a number of topics throughout this chapter, which will include:

A recap on the use of jQuery to animate content:

  • Switching to CSS-based animation
  • Exploring the use of pre-built libraries such as Animate.css
  • Exploring the options available when making the change to using PostCSS
  • Working through creating an animation-based demo, using PostCSS
  • Learning how to optimize animations using PostCSS

Let's make a start…!

Revisiting basic animations

Animation is quickly becoming king in web development, more and more websites are using animations to help bring life and keep content fresh. If done correctly, they add an extra layer of experience for the end user; done badly, and the website will soon lose more custom than water through a sieve!

Throughout the course of the chapter, we'll take a look at making the change from writing standard animation, through to using processors such as SASS, and finally, switching to using PostCSS. I can't promise you that we'll be creating complex JavaScript-based demos such as the Caaaat animation (http://roxik.com/cat/—try resizing the window!), but we will see that using PostCSS is really easy when creating animations for the browser.

To kick off our journey, we'll start with a quick look at the traditional animation—how many times have you had to use .animate() in jQuery, over the years? Thankfully, we have the power of CSS3 to help with simple animations, but there was a time when we had to animate content using jQuery.

As a quick reminder, try running animate.html from the T34 – Basic animation using jQuery animate() folder. It's not going to set the world on fire, but is a nice reminder of times gone by, when we didn't know any better:

Revisiting basic animations

If we take a look at a profile of this animation from within a DOM inspector from within a browser such as Firefox, it would look something like this screenshot:

Revisiting basic animations

Whilst the numbers aren't critical, the key point here is the two dotted green lines, and that the results show a high degree of inconsistent activity. This is a good indicator that activity is erratic, with a low frame count, resulting in animations that are jumpy and less than 100% smooth.

The great thing, though, is that there are options available to help provide smoother animations; we'll take a brief look at some of the options available, before making the change to using PostCSS. For now though, let's make that first step to moving away from using jQuery, beginning with a look at the options available for reducing dependency on the use of .animate() or jQuery.