What causes the jumpiness?

[barry]

I have a script that animates a change from horizontal order of list
items to vertical order. It's buggy at the moment, but what I'm
wondering about is whether the animation is smooth on anyone's
computer. The number of "frames" that get skipped is slightly different
in every browser and probably isn't due to the bugs. The animation is
smoothest in Opera. You can test it at
http://www.polisource.com/PublicMisc/list-splitter-animation.html . The
configuration I've been using for testing in different browsers is 10
columns, vertical, and web (the interface prompts you for these
values). Are there minimum system requirements that I could suggest to
users of the script or would the vast majority of today's computers
cause the jumpiness? I'm pretty sure I could change the setTimeout
values to make it smoother, but there would be less simultaneous
movement and I'm curious what other's see in this version.

 

[McKirahan]

I have a script that animates a change from horizontal order of list
items to vertical order. It's buggy at the moment, but what I'm
wondering about is whether the animation is smooth on anyone's
computer. The number of "frames" that get skipped is slightly different
in every browser and probably isn't due to the bugs. The animation is
smoothest in Opera. You can test it at
http://www.polisource.com/PublicMisc/list-splitter-animation.html . The
configuration I've been using for testing in different browsers is 10
columns, vertical, and web (the interface prompts you for these
values). Are there minimum system requirements that I could suggest to
users of the script or would the vast majority of today's computers
cause the jumpiness? I'm pretty sure I could change the setTimeout
values to make it smoother, but there would be less simultaneous
movement and I'm curious what other's see in this version.

What do you mean by "jumpiness" -- a slow transition?

Under IE5.5 it frequently displayed overlapping "frames";
after a little while it stopped and displayed correctly.
Under FF1.5 is was fast and smooth.

Why not ask all three questions in one prompt; for example:

Script Prompt:

Enter number of columns to divide list into (1-20)
Enter "v" for vertical order or "h" for horizontal
Enter "w" to view as a webpage or "s" to view source code.

You could also specify a default value; such as: "1hw".

Also, there is no input validation; any entry is allowed.

 

[barry]

What do you mean by "jumpiness" -- a slow transition?

Under IE5.5 it frequently displayed overlapping "frames";
after a little while it stopped and displayed correctly.
Under FF1.5 is was fast and smooth.

A slow transition is fine. That's completely under my control with
setTimeout. I was wondering about the occasional freezing of the motion
before things would move again, and the list items moving more than one
pixel at a time, which they aren't programmed to do. In FF 1.5, I see
that freezing. If it's smooth for you, I guess a faster computer would
solve the FF problem. Celeron 2.10 GH, 640 MB RAM isn't good enough.
I'm trying to estimate the minimum specs for smooth motion in all the
major browsers.

Why not ask all three questions in one prompt; for example:

Script Prompt:

Enter number of columns to divide list into (1-20)
Enter "v" for vertical order or "h" for horizontal
Enter "w" to view as a webpage or "s" to view source code.

You could also specify a default value; such as: "1hw".

Also, there is no input validation; any entry is allowed.

This animated version of the script was done as kind of a challenge,
not for production, so I'm not worrying about that right now.