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Every Frame Perfect

tonsky.me

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Re: Every Frame Perfect

#151

Post by m132 »

I still have Sonoma on some of my devices. All I can say is: wow, steady regress.

The save dialog, albeit a little shakey, is nowhere as chaotic as in your example. The buttons in Notes move between panes in a perfect seamless manner. Albeit the animation occasionally glitches out when you repeatedly focus and deselect the Safari bar, the cursor is perfectly timed with the text, only fading in after the text is done moving to the left. The Preview bug must be something recent too, I can't reproduce this.

https://streamable.com/kx7op6

I miss it when companies like Apple, Sony, and IBM paid attention to the smallest details. Apple in particular earned its current valuation with the iPhone, an all-touch device that did nothing extraordinary compared to Windows Mobile and Symbian PDAs of the time (and was in fact functionally lagging behind compared, failing to even match the then-contemporary feature phones in some areas) BUT one that you didn't actually want to smash against a wall after a few minutes of use. Now these animations are bringing back exactly the Windows Mobile and Symbian vibes.

Remember how happy Steve used to be with OS X animations? He would replay them on stage multiple times, in slow motion. These though, these would have the people behind them face the fate of the iPhone 4 antenna man.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#152

Post by Liftyee »

lynndotpy wrote: post #135
Kiro wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which the majority of people think is a horrible experience. There's even a sibling comment in this thread pointing that out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48518721

Unless you can back that up, "Majority" is something you're making up. It's a guess. It also doesn't matter whether it's true if the majority or not- "Instant transitions are only good in theory" is not a true statement. Instant transitions are good in practice for many people and that has been true for decades.

I see Kiro's guess and raise you an anecdote. I just turned animations off on my Android device, and instantly it feels faster and more responsive.

Maybe software programs got faster with our faster CPUs but all the animations just made everything feel slow.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#153

Post by lynndotpy »

Kiro wrote: post #147
lynndotpy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you can back that up, "Majority" is something you're making up. It's a guess. It also doesn't matter whether it's true if the majority or not- "Instant transitions are only good in theory" is not a true statement. Instant transitions are good in practice for many people and that has been true for decades.

Most people with that opinion keep using apps and devices with animations, but thinking it would be better without them. Very few actually torture themselves like that in practice.

For me, animations are the torture, and I am most productive on machines that aren't artificially hobbled with animations one can't turn off.

Your experiences are not universal.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#154

Post by glitchc »

We do not perceive the world as a series of still frames. Any UI forcing that upon us is unnatural and will break immersion in subtle and unexpected ways. Apple and macOS may have their faults but the UI design is head and shoulders above anything the Wayland team has produced to date.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#155

Post by lynndotpy »

Liftyee wrote: post #152
lynndotpy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you can back that up, "Majority" is something you're making up. It's a guess. It also doesn't matter whether it's true if the majority or not- "Instant transitions are only good in theory" is not a true statement. Instant transitions are good in practice for many people and that has been true for decades.

I see Kiro's guess and raise you an anecdote. I just turned animations off on my Android device, and instantly it feels faster and more responsive. Maybe software programs got faster with our faster CPUs but all the animations just made everything feel slow.

Yes! It feels faster and more responsive now because it is faster and more responsive now. Your device is taking less time to do the same work.

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#157

Post by [deleted] »

voidnap wrote: post #64
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…

What do you think the premise of the article is? The article is pretty narrowly speaking of "app" UI and your comment is a "well actually" that some videos intentionally introduce noise or temporary discomfort for an emotional or artistic effect. On the same basis, comments like yours would defend screen shake if it was added to desktop and mobile apps on every user input.

[deleted]

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#158

Post by voidnap »

fasterik wrote: post #68
voidnap wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the premise of the article is? The article is pretty narrowly speaking of "app" UI and your comment is a "well actually" that some videos intentionally introduce noise or temporary discomfort for an emotional or artistic effect. On the same basis, comments like yours would defend screen shake if it was added to desktop and mobile apps on every user input.

The premise of the article is that every frame of an animation should look good if captured and analyzed statically, in isolation. There's no reason provided for this other than "it feels right." I'm saying that this ignores how the human visual system works and how we perceive displays in real-world lighting conditions. I used film as an analogy to illustrate the point. The idea that I would defend screen shake is a…

> every frame of an animation should look good if captured and analyzed statically, in isolation

This is just true though. It isn't the only thing that matters but if you are creating a game or a video sometimes you do capture things frame by frame to understand why something looks off when animated.

Your film thing isn't an analogy, you are trying to say film is an example where some frames have motion blur so they don't look good, but since that's okay in film, it should be okay in software and apps. The word "good" is being overloaded to mean different things in each example. Screen shake in a video game or chromatic abberation in a film can be good in those contexts because they are the intent of the artistic direction. Maybe if you are hung up on the word "good" replace it with "appropriate" or "intentional".

Re: Every Frame Perfect

#159

Post by numpad0 »

fasterik wrote: post #116
mrandish wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially thought "Every Frame Perfect" meant a strict avoidance of any jank or stutter in motion, which I'm fully on-board for but as a film, video and 3D technologist, you're spot on calling out motion blur and similar temporal artifacts. In motion, they not only look 'most correct' to the human visual system, they are the most interpretable. Adding the correct blur to motion makes it appear clearer but seen as a…

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.
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