Choppy scrolling in Safari - javascript

I have a problem with my micro website. When I scroll, it's nice and smooth in all browsers except Safari. When I do scroll in Safari, the content div jumps or moves frequently (it should stay in place) and makes the scrolling look choppy. Do you have any idea what could be wrong?
This is the website:
http://beta.dynamicdust.com

I haven't checked to see how my answer compares to Jack's, but I think the problem is that Safari attempts to be very power efficient. As a result, it is hesitant to enable hardware acceleration unless it needs to. A common trick that people use to force hardware acceleration is to place
-webkit-transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0);
into the css for the divs which are moving. I tried it with the content class and it seemed a little better. You might try applying it to the other layers as well.
EDIT: I applied it to the left and right text holder divs as well, and the page seems just as smooth as Chrome now.

I took a look and did see the "choppy" scrolling you mentioned (looking at it more, it was hit or miss - sometimes it was smooth, other times it was VERY choppy).
It seems you've got some performance issues with your parallax callback on Safari (though it wouldn't surprise me if it's some buggy implementation with Safari...)
One thing I would recommend is taking a look at requestAnimationFrame for webkit. For a test, I wrapped the logic to update the offsets in a raf (and cached the window.pageYOffset value) and it seemed smoother on my end.
function parallax(e) {
window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame(function() {
var offset = window.pageYOffset;
a.style.top = (offset / 2) + "px";
b.style.top = (offset / 2) + "px";
textbox.style.top =- (offset * 0.7) + "px";
textbox2.style.top =- (offset * 0.7) + "px";
});
}
To be honest, you could probably use raf for all browsers (if they support it).
Another trick people use when animating elements is to accelerate the layer that the element you are animating is on. There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest is to use -webkit-transition and set translateZ(0). It wouldn't hurt to add the two additional lines as well:
-webkit-backface-visibility: hidden;
-webkit-perspective: 1000;
Also, I noticed that some elements you offset (using style) are position: relative - Personally, I'd say that any element that's to be animated should be position: absolute. This will remove the element from the DOM, and offsetting it won't cause reflows to surrounding elements (which may contribute to your choppiness).
Edit - one other thing I noticed is that "choppiness/weirdness" happens when you encounter rubberbanding on safari (my guess are the negative values). That might be something you'll want to look at as well.
Good luck!

Just jotting this down, as I came across this today with an overflow auto element:
The solution was to add this rule to whatever element the scrollbar shows up on:
-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
More detail can be found here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/-webkit-overflow-scrolling

Elements with heavy transitions on hover and active state can result in rendering issues.
In our case we had box-shadow transitions on some elements that were applied on hover. When the user scrolled the page and swiped the effected element, the transition got triggered. The browser then had to do the hard work of rendering the transition while scrolling.

Related

Unexpected jump while changing position from absolute to fixed, why?

first of all I want to say that it's not about content jumping!
I have a navbar and a sidebar which both have absolute position. after user scrolls 100 pixels I change both of them to fixed. but an odd action happens (not always!). wrappers of navbar and sidebar flush for a second. I tested it with different browsers and it does not depend on browser. I tried to reproduce the situation in this fiddle:
https://jsfiddle.net/addxmkgj/
(resize the screen as large as possible it happens in large screens)
-- Edit --
https://codepen.io/anon/pen/dJKBPe
codepen link added too.
Causes
Scrolling can generate scroll events quickly and handlers may need to either throttle scroll events to some extent (e.g. perform code action after scrolling has stopped) or be fairly lightweight functions that can execute quickly.
In addition scroll event handling is not synchronized with page update: if the mouse wheel initiates downward scrolling, scrolling can continue after the wheel is released (and similarly with touch event scrolling). The browser can scroll below a top position of 100px before scroll event handling has had a chance to catch up and change the positioning.
The result is the header jumps down from being partially off-screen to occupy a fixed position at top of screen. The faster the scroll action (or the busier the browser is) the more likely it is that jumping will be noticeable.
A secondary effect in desktop browsing is that when the side bar panel scrolls upwards past top of screen and moves down again, a visible patch of white screen "flashes" momentarily below the side bar before fixed positioning takes effect.
Experimental Remedies
Flashing of the side bar can be reduced but not necessarily fully eliminated, by increasing the height of the container. Changing the height to 150% with visible overflow met with some success:
.side-bar {
position: absolute;
height: 150%;
... /* more declarations */
This may or may not conflict with application requirements.
Some mitigation of navbar jumping can be achieved by using requestAnimationFrame call backs to monitor scrollTop values and change positioning as necessary. This does not use scroll event handling as such:
$(document).ready(function() {
$(window).resize(function() {
if( $(window).width() > 850) {
$('.navbar').css('display', 'block');
} else {
$('.navbar').css('display', 'none');
}
});
scrollTo(0, 0);
var num = 100;
var bAbsolute = true;
function checkScroll() {
var newTop = $(window).scrollTop();
if( bAbsolute && newTop >= num) {
$('.navbar').css('position', 'fixed');
$('.navbar').css('top', '0');
$('.side-bar').css('position', 'fixed');
$('.side-bar').css('top', '0');
bAbsolute = false;
}
if( !bAbsolute && newTop < num) {
$('.navbar').css('position', 'absolute');
$('.side-bar').css('position', 'absolute');
$('.navbar').css('top', '100px');
$('.side-bar').css('top', '100px');
bAbsolute = true;
}
requestAnimationFrame( checkScroll);
}
requestAnimationFrame( checkScroll)
});
This code showed an improvement in jump reduction but was not perfect. It is not particularly a JQuery solution and calls requestAnimationFrame directly.
One option, of course, is to do nothing given browser timing constraints.
Update
This MDN guide for Scroll linked effects explains the root cause problem better than I was able to:
most browsers now support some sort of asynchronous scrolling .... the visual scroll position is updated in the compositor thread and is visible to the user before the scroll event is updated in the DOM and fired on the main thread ... This can cause the effect to be laggy, janky, or jittery — in short, something we want to avoid.
So the absolutely positioned elements can scroll off screen (to some extent) before scroll handlers are notified of a new scroll position.
The solution going forward is to use sticky positioning (see the scroll effects guide above or the CSS position guide. However position:sticky swaps between relative and fixed position so the HTML would need redesigning to accommodate this.
Sticky positioning is also leading edge technology at January 2018, and not yet recommended for production use on MDN. A web search for "JQuery support sticky position" revealed a choice of JQuery plugin support.
Recommendation
Potentially the best-case compromise may be to redesign the HTML to use sticky positioning and include a JQuery plugin that uses native support when available or a polyfill when not - site visitors with supporting browsers will get the best experience, those with older browsers will get functional support.

JQuery scrollTop animation choppy in Chrome

I have an element I'm applying some basic transitions to based on scroll position. It works smoothly as expected in Safari and Firefox, but scrolling in Chrome is very choppy.
$(document).ready(function($) {
var divUp = $('.fade');
var divDown = $('.fade-down');
$(window).on('scroll', function() {
var st = $(this).scrollTop();
divUp.css({
'top' : -(st/6)+"px",
'opacity' : 1 - st/400
});
divDown.css({
'opacity' : 1 - st/400
});
});
});
I commented out each CSS property individually, but Chrome is choppy either way. The top property is moving a relatively positioned element.
How can I achieve the desired effect while still making Chrome's JS engine happy? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
You're experiencing layout thrashing.
Changing an element's top property invalidates the current layout. Usually this prompts the browser to re-compute the layout asynchronously (i.e. not immediately).
However, calling scrollTop forces the browser to re-layout synchronously. Because you call it in a scroll event handler, this happens repeatedly in a very short space of time. This sequence of DOM write-reads is a known cause of jank.
To improve performance you need to prevent layout thrashing. Changing the CSS transform (and opacity) properties does not invalidate the browser's layout - they only require a composite, which is much faster.
If you animate a transform: translateY instead of top the browser won't need to compute costly calculations on every animation frame:
divUp.css({
'transform': 'translateY( ' + (-(st/6)) + 'px)',
'opacity': 1 - st/400
});
You can help the browser optimise for the transition by setting the CSS will-change property:
.your-div {
will-change: transform;
}
Further reading:
Jank free - Articles on improving web app performance
CSS Triggers - Lists the steps that browsers need to take when each CSS property is changed

Content flicker/jump on infinite scroll/loop

I am looking for help / a point in the right direction / or a solution for a flicker/jump, when scrolling on a looping/infinite website, which can be seen in this fiddle.
What seems to be causing the jump is:
"$(window).scrollTop(half_way - child_height);", and what could also be a Chrome windows scrollTop bug, but it is happening in all browsers at the moment.
If I remove "- child_height" there is no longer a flicker but the page no longer scrolls correctly, which can be seen in this fiddle.
Also, on the very first scroll the right hand column jumps up by three boxes - also because of 'half_way', which I can fix by giving it a "bottom: -600px;"
The full code:
http://jsfiddle.net/djsbaker/j3d8r/1/
var num_children = $('#up-left').children().length;
var child_height = $('#up-left').height() / num_children;
var half_way = num_children * child_height / 2;
$(window).scrollTop(half_way);
function crisscross() {
$('#up-left').css('bottom', '-' + window.scrollY + 'px');
$('#down-right').css('bottom', '-' + window.scrollY + 'px');
var firstLeft = $('#up-left').children().first();
var lastLeft = $('#up-left').children().last();
var lastRight = $('#down-right').children().last();
var firstRight = $('#down-right').children().first();
if (window.scrollY > half_way ) {
$(window).scrollTop(half_way - child_height);
lastRight.appendTo('#up-left');
firstLeft.prependTo('#down-right');
} else if (window.scrollY < half_way - child_height) {
$(window).scrollTop(half_way);
lastLeft.appendTo('#down-right');
firstRight.prependTo('#up-left');
}
}
$(window).scroll(crisscross);
Okay - here is a 'working' version - and by works I mean it less flickery than before. I thought it was flicker free, and it was when I was on battery power, but plugged into the mains and the CPU is fast enough to get flicker.
As I mentioned, to get rid of the flicker you need to clone the objects, manipulate them and then replace them into the DOM, rather than just manipulating the DOM directly.
I did this by getting the contents of <div id="content"> manipulating them and then replacing them into that <div>.
Also, it's a good idea to only find things in the DOM once, and from then on use a reference to that object rather than searching repeatedly. e.g.
var leftSide = $(clone).find('.up-left');
....
lastRight.appendTo(leftSide);
....
$(leftSide).css('bottom', '-' + window.scrollY + 'px');
rather than:
lastRight.appendTo('#up-left');
$('#up-left').css('bottom', '-' + window.scrollY + 'px');
Searching the DOM is relatively slow, and so storing references can improve performance/reduce flicker.
Storing the object also makes the code easier to understand (imho) as you can easily see that you're referencing the same thing, rather than possibly different things.
I still get flickering in chrome on windows with Danack solution. For this site I would control all the scrolling (you already scroll manually one of the sides), and give elements absolute positions.
Or if you insist on using the browser scrolling, may be use animations: animate the height of the last elements till 0px then use appendTo, and then animato from 0px to the normal height...
This might be a long shot, but I had the same flickering when working with infinitescroll,
and ended up using imagesLoaded.I ended up appending the additional images (now loaded) with a fade in, and that prevented them from flickering because of the fact they were loaded.
So maybe by using the imagesloaded - or a callback on the images, you can solve the flickering. It does decrease the speed though. I can image that if you want to scroll through everything as fast as possible, this might not be the solution. Good luck!
A solution would be to not use the native scrolling functionality but to simulate scrolling. This would be done by setting the overflow of your content to "hidden" in addition with capturing the "mousewheel" event on it and triggering some action when it is called. I started to try this out here (using MooTools instead of jQuery since I'm more fimilar with it). It's currently just "working" on the left side by altering the margin-top of the first element.
My next steps would be:
Check if the negative margin-top of the first element is bigger than the height of it and move it to the right side if so.
Same logic for the last box on the right side with a negative margin-bottom.
This has some downsides, though. Simulating scrolling doesn't feel as natural as the native scrolling functionality and clicking the mousewheel doesn't work. These might be solveable but it would require some more coding to get it to work smoothly. Anyway, in the end you would have a solution without any flickering and with no sticky scrollbar at the side (An idea for a replacement could be a small area on the side that triggers the scrolling on mouseover).

Parallax 'background-image/position/attachment' jQuery animation is jittery

Here's the breakdown...
wrapper (position:relative; overflow:hidden; )
section-container (position:absolute)
multiple child sections
I attach a mousewheel event listener and animate (with easing) the 'top' position of 'section-container'. As this position changes, the 'background-position' of each section moves vertically based on the position of 'section-container's 'top' property (continually updated through a setTimeout()).
All of that works as it should, except as the 'background-position' changes, the image has a bit of a jitter. This doesn't happen if the 'background-attachment' is set to 'fixed'... but I don't want that.
Can anyone explain this, with a possible fix? I continually refer to the https://victoriabeckham.landrover.com/ site and can't figure out what they're doing differently to get theirs operating so efficiently.
You can check this out, i believe its where they do most of the animating:
https://victoriabeckham.landrover.com/js/ScrollAnimator.js?v=471
I would have to say they have some kind of framework that they are using to accomplish this.
EDIT: Sorry didn't see the new answer above mine, seems like a good starting point.
-Ken
If you inspect this website carefully, you will able to use it like landrover site.
You need to use: scrollTo plugin and parallax plugin
And document jQuery should be like this:
$(document).ready(function(){
$('#nav').localScroll(800);
//.parallax(xPosition, speedFactor, outerHeight) options:
//xPosition - Horizontal position of the element
//inertia - speed to move relative to vertical scroll. Example: 0.1 is one tenth the speed of scrolling, 2 is twice the speed of scrolling
//outerHeight (true/false) - Whether or not jQuery should use it's outerHeight option to determine when a section is in the viewport
$('#intro').parallax("50%", 0.1);
$('#second').parallax("50%", 0.1);
$('.bg').parallax("50%", 0.4);
$('#third').parallax("50%", 0.3);
});
Ok. So I figured out my issue was when trying to animate() the 'section-container' on the 'top' property. I was using a "+=" to allow it to increment from its current position. Not a good idea when using 'mousewheel' events. I changed it to a hard-set variable that is continually incremented/decremented.

How to solve element flicker while scrolling with parallax effect in JavaScript?

I am trying to re-create website with parallax effect using JavaScript. That means that I have two or more layers, that are moving different speeds while scrolling.
In my case I'm moving only one layer, the other one remains static:
layer 1 = website text;
layer 2 = element background;
for this I'm using simple source code (with jQuery 1.6.4):
var docwindow = $(window);
function newpos(pos, adjust, ratio){
return ((pos - adjust) * ratio) + "px";
}
function move(){
var pos = docwindow.scrollTop();
element.css({'top' : newpos(pos, 0, 0.5)});
}
$(window).scroll(function(){
move();
});
The Problem:
- All calculations are done right and the effect "works" as expected. But there is some performance glitch under some browsers (Chrome MAC/Windows, Opera MAC, IE, paradoxically not Safari).
What do I see during scrolling?
- While scrolling the background moves in one direction together with scroll, but it seems to occasionally jump few pixels back and then forth, which creates very disturbing effect (not fluid).
Solutions that I tried:
- adding a timer to limit scroll events
- using .animate() method with short duration instead of .css() method.
I've also observed, that the animation is smooth when using .scrollTo method (scrollTo jQuery plugin). So I suspect that there is something wrong with firing scroll events (too fast).
Have you observed the same behavior?
Do you know, how to fix it?
Can you post a better solution?
Thanks for all responses
EDIT #1:
Here you can find jsfiddle demonstration (with timer): http://jsfiddle.net/4h9Ye/1/
I think you should be using scrollTop() instead and change the background position to fixed. The problem is that setting it to absolute will make it move by default when you scroll up or down.
The flicker occurs because the position is updated as part of the default browser scroll and updated again as part of your script. This will render both positions instead of just the one you want. With fixed, the background will never move unless you tell it so.
I've created a demo for you at http://jsfiddle.net/4h9Ye/2/ .

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