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Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

nicolasgallagher.com

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Re: Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

#21

Post by ugh »

weego wrote: post #7

Chrome on my MBP really chugs trying to scroll down the page, I'm surprised it's being pushed that hard looking at the code.

Both Chrome and Safari get ever so slightly jittery on my four year old MBP. The most important thing to test is probably whether performance is affected if you want to use drop shadows.

There are other factors which can make scrolling less than butter smooth on slightly aged hardware, this seems to be a weak spot of many fancy designs. I don’t know whether those designs are just not tested in all browsers and on slightly older hardware or whether that’s an intentional trade-off. I’m extremely annoyed by even slightly jittery scrolling, but that’s probably just me.

Re: Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

#24

Post by andrenotgiant »

flog wrote: post #2

I use these with caution on animated pages or large elements; I don't have links to hand, but have lots of anecdotal stories of performance degradation with CSS drop shadows. Just a friendly word of (unbacked) warning to frontend devs :)

Chrome for Mac was exceptionally bad at drop shadows last time I checked...

Re: Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

#25

Post by pohl »

antimatter15 wrote: post #11
flog wrote: post #2

I use these with caution on animated pages or large elements; I don't have links to hand, but have lots of anecdotal stories of performance degradation with CSS drop shadows. Just a friendly word of (unbacked) warning to frontend devs :)

I think recently Webkit got a fix for that.

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22102

Re: Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

#26

Post by vlod »

ciroduran wrote: post #20
JonnieCache wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you are correct is laughable in this age of GPUs commonly having 512mb+ of dedicated RAM. Think what the latest game engines can do at 60fps, why oh why do our browsers still sweat over a few alpha channels in 2011? EDIT: My galaxy S phone runs Quake 3 at 60fps, flawlessly. MY PHONE RUNS QUAKE 3! Why can't my browser do alpha blending at more than 10fps?

Because these calculations are done on software, not GPU. GPU programming is hard. Using the GPU requires extra-integration and extra-work that most developers are not willing to do.

I think browsers are moving to using the GPU: chrome: http://dropshado.ws/post/2857434171/chrome-gpu-accelerated-c...

ie: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/03/16/internet-explor...

ff: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/09/firefox-4-beta-5-brings-g...

Re: Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

#27

Post by JonnieCache »

ciroduran wrote: post #20
JonnieCache wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you are correct is laughable in this age of GPUs commonly having 512mb+ of dedicated RAM. Think what the latest game engines can do at 60fps, why oh why do our browsers still sweat over a few alpha channels in 2011? EDIT: My galaxy S phone runs Quake 3 at 60fps, flawlessly. MY PHONE RUNS QUAKE 3! Why can't my browser do alpha blending at more than 10fps?

Because these calculations are done on software, not GPU. GPU programming is hard. Using the GPU requires extra-integration and extra-work that most developers are not willing to do.

>Using the GPU requires extra-integration and extra-work that most developers are not willing to do.

Once again, microsoft's decision to deliberately stagnate the browser market making life difficult for us all.

Re: Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

#28

Post by chadgeidel »

JonnieCache wrote: post #27
ciroduran wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because these calculations are done on software, not GPU. GPU programming is hard. Using the GPU requires extra-integration and extra-work that most developers are not willing to do.

>Using the GPU requires extra-integration and extra-work that most developers are not willing to do. Once again, microsoft's decision to deliberately stagnate the browser market making life difficult for us all.

Wait, when did MS prevent other browser manufacturers from including hardware-accelerated rendering?

Also - to specifically counter your point IE9 will have hardware accelerated rendering via Direct2D: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-...

Re: Brilliant use of CSS drop shadows

#30

Post by JonnieCache »

chadgeidel wrote: post #28
JonnieCache wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Using the GPU requires extra-integration and extra-work that most developers are not willing to do. Once again, microsoft's decision to deliberately stagnate the browser market making life difficult for us all.

Wait, when did MS prevent other browser manufacturers from including hardware-accelerated rendering? Also - to specifically counter your point IE9 will have hardware accelerated rendering via Direct2D: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-...

They actually completely stopped development on IE between version 6 and 7. There was no IE dev team, beyond people patching bugs.

Obviously this did not prevent other people doing GPU-acceleration, but the leading player deliberately halting development will and did cause the market to stagnate.

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