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Every Frame Perfect

tonsky.me

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Re: Every Frame Perfect

#171

Post by numpad0 »

ikesau wrote: post #4

I'm sure a UI that had none of these imperfect frames would feel better, but now I really want someone to edit each of these clips to show what it would actually look like. At the same time, why does everything need motion? My understanding is that motion should be used if an action subtly changes the UI in a region that's different from where the action was triggered (e.g. toasts) I think many of these transitions a…

Slot machines has to have something always going on, overly dynamic Apple animations help with that. For regular UI animations, it helps normal users who struggle with sudden changes in screen contents, as well as helping to smooth out framerate and hide delays caused by API calls or backend processing.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#172

Post by imathew »

akersten wrote: post #82
namuol wrote: post #72

Would be nice if there were some _positive_ examples to go along with all of the negative ones. All I’m really getting from this is that I should avoid animations, which I don’t think is what the author is actually trying to say.

> All I’m really getting from this is that I should avoid animations Wouldn't be the worst takeaway from the article. You should avoid animation for animation's sake in general. Imagine if we animated letters flying up from your phone's keyboard into the text field as you type them for example.

As a user of software I find myself disabling most transition animations when the OS or application supports it, desktop, mobile and web. Very rarely I find myself turning something back on - either it's actually useful in the situation, or it's done so well that it's pleasant even to an old like me.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#173

Post by dagmx »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #169
dagmx wrote: post #163

I have a lot of thoughts about this: I think this is a weakly presented argument. The article doesn’t actually present stronger alternatives or even why anything shown is negative to the user. It might be negative but otherwise this is the same vacant critique that is levied by pointing at smear frame or transitional points in media to critique it. The user also has an untenable maxim. Every frame must make sense? I…

I think your critique is actually the hollowest thing here. The article is presenting an idea, not a solution. You've failed to see this and have constructed several strawman arguments in order to critique it. Most importantly the article does not present itself in a definite sense - it is written with care to say "I think", "Next thought:", "Probably", "So yeah.". This article is a person sharing what they are think…

There’s an irony in you claiming my comment is uncharitable and claiming the article is a discussion point when you haven’t even taken up the question I posited and framed them as a strawman.

Can it be possible to make everything during a user interaction perfect looking? What does that mean?

That was part of my original comment that you skimmed past rather than engaging with. So if you truly believe this should be a starting point of a discussion, then why not even bother taking that point to build a discussion point off of?

I’d also argue that this is not presented as just an idea. That is disingenuous. The author clearly writes “I call these situations “The technology has outsmarted the programmer” “

That is more than just a discussion point but a levied criticism at the skill of the people making things. In turn therefore they’ve set the framing of skill as part of the discussion and I don’t think it’s unfair to point out their own lack of ability to execute to their high standard.

But let’s go by your standard of saying that we shouldn’t take the authors own execution or their own words into consideration but only focus on the core idea they present.

Then that still leaves defining what they consider every frame being perfect. What are the bounds of that statement?

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#174

Post by jiggawatts »

A really infuriating example of this is the Windows Photos app (or whatever it is called this month) where scrolling through a photo album will show every image jumping around as it first shows them at some arbitrary scale, and then fits them to the window.

Lazy, lazy development.

"Job done, boss! Ready to ship to... checks notes... 3 billion users!"

"Did you test it?"

"Test? I thought we had a QA department!"

"Nah, we fired all of them a decade ago. You're the QA now."

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#176

Post by enraged_camel »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #169
dagmx wrote: post #163

I have a lot of thoughts about this: I think this is a weakly presented argument. The article doesn’t actually present stronger alternatives or even why anything shown is negative to the user. It might be negative but otherwise this is the same vacant critique that is levied by pointing at smear frame or transitional points in media to critique it. The user also has an untenable maxim. Every frame must make sense? I…

I think your critique is actually the hollowest thing here. The article is presenting an idea, not a solution. You've failed to see this and have constructed several strawman arguments in order to critique it. Most importantly the article does not present itself in a definite sense - it is written with care to say "I think", "Next thought:", "Probably", "So yeah.". This article is a person sharing what they are think…

>> The article is presenting an idea, not a solution.

The article establishes an arbitrary standard, provides examples and criticizes them on the basis that they don't meet that arbitrary standard, and then... nothing.

It is easy to criticize something from the outside. Much harder to dig deep, learn the material and understand why it produces the status quo, and then propose workable solutions. That's where the actual value lies.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#177

Post by mrandish »

numpad0 wrote: post #159
fasterik wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your last point, I think it's almost always wrong to move something discontinuously, but I do think designers should think a lot more about getting out of the way of the user. A 50-100 ms animation is more than enough for most motions and keeps the UI feeling snappy. Also, animation should be decoupled from input wherever possible. I hate it when I have to sit there waiting for an animation to complete befo…

... I wonder if we're seeing a downstream effect of Apple rejecting Flash on iPhone, triggering a slow collapse of Adobe empire. It seems that there are multiple concepts missing in conversations going on here.

Sorry, I'm not connecting how "collapse of Adobe empire" leads to "multiple concepts missing" in this UX discussion. Can you clarify?

Also: Apple dumped Flash ~15 yrs ago, so whatever it is... it's very slow. The larger, more recent suspects for any "collapse of Adobe empire" would be "Adobe forcing $ubscription model" and "rise of Figma."

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#179

Post by brandensilva »

fasterik wrote: post #55

I agree that some of the examples the author provided are instances of bad animation. But I don't agree with the premise of the article. Computer graphics is all about exploiting features of the human visual system. We perceive things differently when they're moving vs. when they're standing still. It's very possible that a "wrong" frame in isolation is the best looking one in a real-time context. We can also pick ap…

This article would do better to show good use cases to draw strengths to their premise but I agree with your take that frames matter less than the total feel of the transition. Some of them definitely could be improved of what he outlined.

I find AI to feel real nice for pushing delight like this further than I used to have time for as it was never a priority.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#180

Post by LocalH »

I don't want animation in my UI at all. I'd much rather have hard cuts between states, as it used to be.

Wasting processing cycles making things look pretty yet it almost always results in a worse situation for the user.

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