Post pobrano z: 1 HTML Element + 5 CSS Properties = Magic!

Let’s say I told you we can get the results below with just one HTML element and five CSS properties for each. No SVG, no images (save for the background on the root that’s there just to make clear that our one HTML element has some transparent parts), no JavaScript. What would you think that involves?

Well, this article is going to explain just how to do this and then also show how to make things fun by adding in some animation.

CSS-ing the Gradient Rays

The HTML is just one <div>.

<div class='rays'></div>

In the CSS, we need to set the dimensions of this element and we need to give it a background so that we can see it. We also make it circular using border-radius:

.rays {
  width: 80vmin; height: 80vmin;
  border-radius: 50%;
  background: linear-gradient(#b53, #f90);
}

And… we’ve already used up four out of five properties to get the result below:

See the Pen by thebabydino (@thebabydino) on CodePen.

So what’s the fifth? mask with a repeating-conic-gradient() value!

Let’s say we want to have 20 rays. This means we need to allocate $p: 100%/20 of the full circle for a ray and the gap after it.

Here we keep the gaps in between rays equal to the rays (so that’s .5*$p for either a ray or a space), but we can make either of them wider or narrower. We want an abrupt change after the ending stop position of the opaque part (the ray), so the starting stop position for the transparent part (the gap) should be equal to or smaller than it. So if the ending stop position for the ray is .5*$p, then the starting stop position for the gap can’t be bigger. However, it can be smaller and that helps us keep things simple because it means we can simply zero it.

$nr: 20; // number of rays
$p: 100%/$nr; // percent of circle allocated to a ray and gap after

.rays {
  /* same as before */
  mask: repeating-conic-gradient(#000 0% .5*$p, transparent 0% $p);
}

Note that, unlike for linear and radial gradients, stop positions for conic gradients cannot be unitless. They need to be either percentages or angular values. This means using something like transparent 0 $p doesn’t work, we need transparent 0% $p (or 0deg instead of 0%, it doesn’t matter which we pick, it just can’t be unitless).

There are a few things to note here when it comes to support:

• Edge doesn’t support masking on HTML elements at this point, though this is listed as In Development and a flag for it (that doesn’t do anything for now) has already shown up in about:flags.
  

  

• conic-gradient() is only supported natively by Blink browsers behind the Experimental Web Platform features flag (which can be enabled from chrome://flags or opera://flags). Support is coming to Safari as well, but, until that happens, Safari still relies on the polyfill, just like Firefox.
  

  

• WebKit browsers still need the -webkit- prefix for mask properties on HTML elements. You’d think that’s no problem since we’re using the polyfill which relies on -prefix-free anyway, so, if we use the polyfill, we need to include -prefix-free before that anyway. Sadly, it’s a bit more complicated than that. That’s because -prefix-free works via feature detection, which fails in this case because all browsers do support mask unprefixed… on SVG elements! But we’re using mask on an HTML element here, so we’re in the situation where WebKit browsers need the -webkit- prefix, but -prefix-free won’t add it. So I guess that means we need to add it manually:

  $nr: 20; // number of rays
  $p: 100%/$nr; // percent of circle allocated to a ray and gap after
  $m: repeating-conic-gradient(#000 0% .5*$p, transparent 0% $p); // mask
  
  .rays {
    /* same as before */
    -webkit-mask: $m;
            mask: $m;
  }

  I guess we could also use Autoprefixer, even if we need to include -prefix-free anyway, but using both just for this feels a bit like using a shotgun to kill a fly.

Adding in Animation

One cool thing about conic-gradient() being supported natively in Blink browsers is that we can use CSS variables inside them (we cannot do that when using the polyfill). And CSS variables can now also be animated in Blink browsers with a bit of Houdini magic (we need the Experimental Web Platform features flag to be enabled for that, but we also need it enabled for native conic-gradient() support, so that shouldn’t be a problem).

In order to prepare our code for the animation, we change our masking gradient so that it uses variable alpha values:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient(
      rgba(#000, var(--a)) 0% .5*$p, 
      rgba(#000, calc(1 - var(--a))) 0% $p);

We then register the alpha --a custom property:

CSS.registerProperty({
  name: '--a', 
  syntax: '<number>', 
  initialValue: 1;
})

And finally, we add in an animation in the CSS:

.rays {
  /* same as before */
  animation: a 2s linear infinite alternate;
}

@keyframes a { to { --a: 0 } }

This gives us the following result:

Meh. Doesn’t look that great. We could however make things more interesting by using multiple alpha values:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient(
      rgba(#000, var(--a0)) 0%, rgba(#000, var(--a1)) .5*$p, 
      rgba(#000, var(--a2)) 0%, rgba(#000, var(--a3)) $p);

The next step is to register each of these custom properties:

for(let i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
  CSS.registerProperty({
    name: `--a${i}`, 
    syntax: '<number>', 
    initialValue: 1 - ~~(i/2)
  })
}

And finally, add the animations in the CSS:

.rays {
  /* same as before */
  animation: a 2s infinite alternate;
  animation-name: a0, a1, a2, a3;
  animation-timing-function: 
    /* easings from easings.net */
    cubic-bezier(.57, .05, .67, .19) /* easeInCubic */, 
    cubic-bezier(.21, .61, .35, 1); /* easeOutCubic */
}

@for $i from 0 to 4 {
  @keyframes a#{$i} { to { --a#{$i}: #{floor($i/2)} } }
}

Note that since we’re setting values to custom properties, we need to interpolate the floor() function.

It now looks a bit more interesting, but surely we can do better?

Let’s try using a CSS variable for the stop position between the ray and the gap:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient(#000 0% var(--p), transparent 0% $p);

We then register this variable:

CSS.registerProperty({
  name: '--p', 
  syntax: '<percentage>', 
  initialValue: '0%'
})

And we animate it from the CSS using a keyframe animation:

.rays {
  /* same as before */
  animation: p .5s linear infinite alternate
}

@keyframes p { to { --p: #{$p} } }

The result is more interesting in this case:

But we can still spice it up a bit more by flipping the whole thing horizontally in between every iteration, so that it’s always flipped for the reverse ones. This means not flipped when --p goes from 0% to $p and flipped when --p goes back from $p to 0%.

The way we flip an element horizontally is by applying a transform: scalex(-1) to it. Since we want this flip to be applied at the end of the first iteration and then removed at the end of the second (reverse) one, we apply it in a keyframe animation as well—in one with a steps() timing function and double the animation-duration.

 $t: .5s;

.rays {
  /* same as before */
  animation: p $t linear infinite alternate, 
    s 2*$t steps(1) infinite;
}

@keyframes p { to { --p: #{$p} } }

@keyframes s { 50% { transform: scalex(-1); } }

Now we finally have a result that actually looks pretty cool:

CSS-ing Gradient Rays and Ripples

To get the rays and ripples result, we need to add a second gradient to the mask, this time a repeating-radial-gradient().

$nr: 20;
$p: 100%/$nr;
$stop-list: #000 0% .5*$p, transparent 0% $p;
$m: repeating-conic-gradient($stop-list), 
    repeating-radial-gradient(closest-side, $stop-list);

.rays-ripples {
  /* same as before */
  mask: $m;
}

Sadly, using multiple stop positions only works in Blink browsers with the same Experimental Web Platform features flag enabled. And while the conic-gradient() polyfill covers this for the repeating-conic-gradient() part in browsers supporting CSS masking on HTML elements, but not supporting conic gradients natively (Firefox, Safari, Blink browsers without the flag enabled), nothing fixes the problem for the repeating-radial-gradient() part in these browsers.

This means we’re forced to have some repetition in our code:

$nr: 20;
$p: 100%/$nr;
$stop-list: #000, #000 .5*$p, transparent 0%, transparent $p;
$m: repeating-conic-gradient($stop-list), 
    repeating-radial-gradient(closest-side, $stop-list);

.rays-ripples {
  /* same as before */
  mask: $m;
}

We’re obviously getting closer, but we’re not quite there yet:

To get the result we want, we need to use the mask-composite property and set it to exclude:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient($stop-list) exclude, 
    repeating-radial-gradient(closest-side, $stop-list);

Note that mask-composite is only supported in Firefox 53+ for now, though Edge should join in when it finally supports CSS masking on HTML elements.

If you think it looks like the rays and the gaps between the rays are not equal, you’re right. This is due to a polyfill issue.

Adding in Animation

Since mask-composite only works in Firefox for now and Firefox doesn’t yet support conic-gradient() natively, we cannot put CSS variables inside the repeating-conic-gradient() (because Firefox still falls back on the polyfill for it and the polyfill doesn’t support CSS variable usage). But we can put them inside the repeating-radial-gradient() and even if we cannot animate them with CSS keyframe animations, we can do so with JavaScript!

Because we’re now putting CSS variables inside the repeating-radial-gradient(), but not inside the repeating-conic-gradient() (as the XOR effect only works via mask-composite, which is only supported in Firefox for now and Firefox doesn’t support conic gradients natively, so it falls back on the polyfill, which doesn’t support CSS variable usage), we cannot use the same $stop-list for both gradient layers of our mask anymore.

But if we have to rewrite our mask without a common $stop-list anyway, we can take this opportunity to use different stop positions for the two gradients:

// for conic gradient
$nc: 20;
$pc: 100%/$nc;
// for radial gradient
$nr: 10;
$pr: 100%/$nr;

The CSS variable we animate is an alpha --a one, just like for the first animation in the rays case. We also introduce the --c0 and --c1 variables because here we cannot have multiple positions per stop and we want to avoid repetition as much as possible:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient(#000 .5*$pc, transparent 0% $pc) exclude, 
    repeating-radial-gradient(closest-side, 
        var(--c0), var(--c0) .5*$pr, 
        var(--c1) 0, var(--c1) $pr);

body {
  --a: 0;
  /* layout, backgrounds and other irrelevant stuff */
}

.xor {
  /* same as before */
  --c0: #{rgba(#000, var(--a))};
  --c1: #{rgba(#000, calc(1 - var(--a)))};
  mask: $m;
}

The alpha variable --a is the one we animate back and forth (from 0 to 1 and then back to 0 again) with a little bit of vanilla JavaScript. We start by setting a total number of frames NF the animation happens over, a current frame index f and a current animation direction dir:

const NF = 50;

let f = 0, dir = 1;

Within an update() function, we update the current frame index f and then we set the current progress value (f/NF) to the current alpha --a. If f has reached either 0 of NF, we change the direction. Then the update() function gets called again on the next refresh.

(function update() {
  f += dir;
  
  document.body.style.setProperty('--a', (f/NF).toFixed(2));
	  
  if(!(f%NF)) dir *= -1;
  
  requestAnimationFrame(update)
})();

And that’s all for the JavaScript! We now have an animated result:

This is a linear animation, the alpha value --a being set to the progress f/NF. But we can change the timing function to something else, as explained in an earlier article I wrote on emulating CSS timing functions with JavaScript.

For example, if we want an ease-in kind of timing function, we set the alpha value to easeIn(f/NF) instead of just f/NF, where we have that easeIn() is:

function easeIn(k, e = 1.675) {
  return Math.pow(k, e)
}

The result when using an ease-in timing function can be seen in this Pen (working only in Firefox 53+). If you’re interested in how we got this function, it’s all explained in the previously linked article on timing functions.

The exact same approach works for easeOut() or easeInOut():

function easeOut(k, e = 1.675) {
  return 1 - Math.pow(1 - k, e)
};

function easeInOut(k) {
  return .5*(Math.sin((k - .5)*Math.PI) + 1)
}

Since we’re using JavaScript anyway, we can make the whole thing interactive, so that the animation only happens on click/tap, for example.

In order to do so, we add a request ID variable (rID), which is initially null, but then takes the value returned by requestAnimationFrame() in the update() function. This enables us to stop the animation with a stopAni() function whenever we want to:

 /* same as before */

let rID = null;

function stopAni() {
  cancelAnimationFrame(rID);
  rID = null
};

function update() {
  /* same as before */
  
  if(!(f%NF)) {
    stopAni();
    return
  }
  
  rID = requestAnimationFrame(update)
};

On click, we stop any animation that may be running, reverse the animation direction dir and call the update() function:

addEventListener('click', e => {
  if(rID) stopAni();
  dir *= -1;
  update()
}, false);

Since we start with the current frame index f being 0, we want to go in the positive direction, towards NF on the first click. And since we’re reversing the direction on every click, it results that the initial value for the direction must be -1 now so that it gets reversed to +1 on the first click.

The result of all the above can be seen in this interactive Pen (working only in Firefox 53+).

We could also use a different alpha variable for each stop, just like we did in the case of the rays:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient(#000 .5*$pc, transparent 0% $pc) exclude, 
    repeating-radial-gradient(closest-side, 
        rgba(#000, var(--a0)), rgba(#000, var(--a1)) .5*$pr, 
        rgba(#000, var(--a2)) 0, rgba(#000, var(--a3)) $pr);

In the JavaScript, we have the ease-in and ease-out timing functions:

const TFN = {
  'ease-in': function(k, e = 1.675) {
    return Math.pow(k, e)
  }, 
  'ease-out': function(k, e = 1.675) {
    return 1 - Math.pow(1 - k, e)
  }
};

In the update() function, the only difference from the first animated demo is that we don’t change the value of just one CSS variable—we now have four to take care of: --a0, --a1, --a2, --a3. We do this within a loop, using the ease-in function for the ones at even indices and the ease-out function for the others. For the first two, the progress is given by f/NF, while for the last two, the progress is given by 1 - f/NF. Putting all of this into one formula, we have:

(function update() {
  f += dir;
  
  for(var i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
    let j = ~~(i/2);
		
    document.body.style.setProperty(
      `--a${i}`, 
      TFN[i%2 ? 'ease-out' : 'ease-in'](j + Math.pow(-1, j)*f/NF).toFixed(2)
    )
  }
	  
  if(!(f%NF)) dir *= -1;
  
  requestAnimationFrame(update)
})();

The result can be seen below:

Just like for conic gradients, we can also animate the stop position between the opaque and the transparent part of the masking radial gradient. To do so, we use a CSS variable --p for the progress of this stop position:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient(#000 .5*$pc, transparent 0% $pc) exclude, 
    repeating-radial-gradient(closest-side, 
        #000, #000 calc(var(--p)*#{$pr}), 
        transparent 0, transparent $pr);

The JavaScript is almost identical to that for the first alpha animation, except we don’t update an alpha --a variable, but a stop progress --p variable and we use an ease-in-out kind of function:

/* same as before */

function easeInOut(k) {
  return .5*(Math.sin((k - .5)*Math.PI) + 1)
};

(function update() {
  f += dir;
  
  document.body.style.setProperty('--p', easeInOut(f/NF).toFixed(2));
	  
  /* same as before */
})();

We can make the effect more interesting if we add a transparent strip before the opaque one and we also animate the progress of the stop position --p0 where we go from this transparent strip to the opaque one:

$m: repeating-conic-gradient(#000 .5*$pc, transparent 0% $pc) exclude, 
    repeating-radial-gradient(closest-side, 
        transparent, transparent calc(var(--p0)*#{$pr}), 
        #000, #000 calc(var(--p1)*#{$pr}), 
        transparent 0, transparent $pr);

In the JavaScript, we now need to animate two CSS variables: --p0 and --p1. We use an ease-in timing function for the first and an ease-out for the second one. We also don’t reverse the animation direction anymore:

const NF = 120, 
      TFN = {
        'ease-in': function(k, e = 1.675) {
          return Math.pow(k, e)
        }, 
        'ease-out': function(k, e = 1.675) {
          return 1 - Math.pow(1 - k, e)
        }
      };

let f = 0;

(function update() {
  f = (f + 1)%NF;
	
  for(var i = 0; i < 2; i++)
    document.body.style.setProperty(`--p${i}`, TFN[i ? 'ease-out' : 'ease-in'](f/NF);
  
  requestAnimationFrame(update)
})();

This gives us a pretty interesting result:

The post 1 HTML Element + 5 CSS Properties = Magic! appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Post pobrano z: Museum of Websites

The team at Kapwing has collected a lot of images from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and presented a history of how the homepage of popular websites like Google and the New York Times have changed over time. It’s super interesting.

I particularly love how Amazon has evolved from a super high information dense webpage that sort of looks like a blog to basically a giant carousel that takes over the whole screen.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

The post Museum of Websites appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Post pobrano z: Creating a Panning Effect for SVG

Earlier this month on the Animation at Work Slack, we had a discussion about finding a way to let users pan inside an SVG.

I made this demo below to show how I’d approach this question:

See the Pen Demo – SVG Panning by Louis Hoebregts (@Mamboleoo) on CodePen.

Here are the four steps to make the above demo work:

1. Get mouse and touch events from the user
2. Calculate the mouse offsets from its origin
3. Save the new viewBox coordinates
4. Handle dynamic viewport

Let’s check those steps one by one more thoroughly.

1. Mouse & Touch Events

To get the mouse or touch position, we first need to add event listeners on our SVG. We can use the Pointer Events to handle all kind of pointers (mouse/touch/stylus/…) but those events are not yet supported by all browsers. We will need to add some fallback to make sure all users will be able to drag the SVG.

// We select the SVG into the page
var svg = document.querySelector('svg');

// If browser supports pointer events
if (window.PointerEvent) {
  svg.addEventListener('pointerdown', onPointerDown); // Pointer is pressed
  svg.addEventListener('pointerup', onPointerUp); // Releasing the pointer
  svg.addEventListener('pointerleave', onPointerUp); // Pointer gets out of the SVG area
  svg.addEventListener('pointermove', onPointerMove); // Pointer is moving
} else {
  // Add all mouse events listeners fallback
  svg.addEventListener('mousedown', onPointerDown); // Pressing the mouse
  svg.addEventListener('mouseup', onPointerUp); // Releasing the mouse
  svg.addEventListener('mouseleave', onPointerUp); // Mouse gets out of the SVG area
  svg.addEventListener('mousemove', onPointerMove); // Mouse is moving

  // Add all touch events listeners fallback
  svg.addEventListener('touchstart', onPointerDown); // Finger is touching the screen
  svg.addEventListener('touchend', onPointerUp); // Finger is no longer touching the screen
  svg.addEventListener('touchmove', onPointerMove); // Finger is moving
}

Because we could have touch events and pointer events, we need to create a tiny function to returns to coordinates either from the first finger either from a pointer.

// This function returns an object with X & Y values from the pointer event
function getPointFromEvent (event) {
  var point = {x:0, y:0};
  // If event is triggered by a touch event, we get the position of the first finger
  if (event.targetTouches) {
    point.x = event.targetTouches[0].clientX;
    point.y = event.targetTouches[0].clientY;
  } else {
    point.x = event.clientX;
    point.y = event.clientY;
  }
  
  return point;
}

Once the page is ready and waiting for any user interactions, we can start handling the mousedown/touchstart events to save the original coordinates of the pointer and create a variable to let us know if the pointer is down or not.

// This variable will be used later for move events to check if pointer is down or not
var isPointerDown = false;

// This variable will contain the original coordinates when the user start pressing the mouse or touching the screen
var pointerOrigin = {
  x: 0,
  y: 0
};

// Function called by the event listeners when user start pressing/touching
function onPointerDown(event) {
  isPointerDown = true; // We set the pointer as down
  
  // We get the pointer position on click/touchdown so we can get the value once the user starts to drag
  var pointerPosition = getPointFromEvent(event);
  pointerOrigin.x = pointerPosition.x;
  pointerOrigin.y = pointerPosition.y;
}

2. Calculate Mouse Offsets

Now that we have the coordinates of the original position where the user started to drag inside the SVG, we can calculate the distance between the current pointer position and its origin. We do this for both the X and Y axis and we apply the calculated values on the viewBox.

// We save the original values from the viewBox
var viewBox = {
  x: 0,
  y: 0,
  width: 500,
  height: 500
};

// The distances calculated from the pointer will be stored here
var newViewBox = {
  x: 0,
  y: 0
};

// Function called by the event listeners when user start moving/dragging
function onPointerMove (event) {
  // Only run this function if the pointer is down
  if (!isPointerDown) {
    return;
  }
  // This prevent user to do a selection on the page
  event.preventDefault();

  // Get the pointer position
  var pointerPosition = getPointFromEvent(event);

  // We calculate the distance between the pointer origin and the current position
  // The viewBox x & y values must be calculated from the original values and the distances
  newViewBox.x = viewBox.x - (pointerPosition.x - pointerOrigin.x);
  newViewBox.y = viewBox.y - (pointerPosition.y - pointerOrigin.y);

  // We create a string with the new viewBox values
  // The X & Y values are equal to the current viewBox minus the calculated distances
  var viewBoxString = `${newViewBox.x} ${newViewBox.y} ${viewBox.width} ${viewBox.height}`;
  // We apply the new viewBox values onto the SVG
  svg.setAttribute('viewBox', viewBoxString);
  
  document.querySelector('.viewbox').innerHTML = viewBoxString;
}

If you don’t feel comfortable with the concept of viewBox, I would suggest you first read this great article by Sara Soueidan.

3. Save Updated viewBox

Now that the viewBox has been updated, we need to save its new values when the user stops dragging the SVG.

This step is important because otherwise we would always calculate the pointer offsets from the original viewBox values and the user will drag the SVG from the starting point every time.

function onPointerUp() {
  // The pointer is no longer considered as down
  isPointerDown = false;

  // We save the viewBox coordinates based on the last pointer offsets
  viewBox.x = newViewBox.x;
  viewBox.y = newViewBox.y;
}

4. Handle Dynamic Viewport

If we set a custom width on our SVG, you may notice while dragging on the demo below that the bird is moving either faster or slower than your pointer.

See the Pen Dynamic viewport – SVG Panning by Louis Hoebregts (@Mamboleoo) on CodePen.

On the original demo, the SVG’s width is exactly matching its viewBox width. The actual size of your SVG may also be called viewport. In a perfect situation, when the user is moving their pointer by 1px, we want the viewBox to translate by 1px.

But, most of the time, the SVG has a responsive size and the viewBox will most likely not match the SVG viewport. If the SVG’s width is twice as big than the viewBox, when the user moves their pointer by 1px, the image inside the SVG will translate by 2px.

To fix this, we need to calculate the ratio between the viewBox and the viewport and apply this ratio while calculating the new viewBox. This ratio must also be updated whenever the SVG size may change.

// Calculate the ratio based on the viewBox width and the SVG width
var ratio = viewBox.width / svg.getBoundingClientRect().width;
window.addEventListener('resize', function() {
  ratio = viewBox.width / svg.getBoundingClientRect().width;
});

Once we know the ratio, we need to multiply the mouse offsets by the ratio to proportionally increase or reduce the offsets.

function onMouseMove (e) {
  [...]
  newViewBox.x = viewBox.x - ((pointerPosition.x - pointerOrigin.x) * ratio);
  newViewBox.y = viewBox.y - ((pointerPosition.y - pointerOrigin.y) * ratio);
  [...]
}

Here’s how this works with a smaller viewport than the viewBox width:

See the Pen Smaller viewport – SVG Panning by Louis Hoebregts (@Mamboleoo) on CodePen.

And another demo with a viewport bigger than the viewBox width:

See the Pen Bigger viewport – SVG Panning by Louis Hoebregts (@Mamboleoo) on CodePen.

[Bonus] Optimizing the code

To make our code a bit shorter, there are two very useful concepts in SVG we could use.

SVG Points

The first concept is to use SVG Points instead of basic Javascript objects to save the pointer’s positions. After creating a new SVG Point variable, we can apply some Matrix Transformation on it to convert the position relative to the screen to a position relative to the current SVG user units.

Check the code below to see how the functions getPointFromEvent() and onPointerDown() have changed.

// Create an SVG point that contains x & y values
var point = svg.createSVGPoint();

function getPointFromEvent (event) {
  if (event.targetTouches) {
    point.x = event.targetTouches[0].clientX;
    point.y = event.targetTouches[0].clientY;
  } else {
    point.x = event.clientX;
    point.y = event.clientY;
  }
  
  // We get the current transformation matrix of the SVG and we inverse it
  var invertedSVGMatrix = svg.getScreenCTM().inverse();
  
  return point.matrixTransform(invertedSVGMatrix);
}

var pointerOrigin;
function onPointerDown(event) {
  isPointerDown = true; // We set the pointer as down
  
  // We get the pointer position on click/touchdown so we can get the value once the user starts to drag
  pointerOrigin = getPointFromEvent(event);
}

By using SVG Points, you don’t even have to handle transformations applied on your SVG! Compare the following two examples where the first is broken when a rotation is applied on the SVG and the second example uses SVG Points.

SVG Animated Rect

The second unknown concept in SVG we can use to shorten our code, is the usage of Animated Rect.

Because the viewBox is actually considered as an SVG Rectangle (x, y, width, height), we can create a variable from its base value that will automatically update the viewBox if we update this variable.

See how easier it is now to update the viewBox of our SVG!

// We save the original values from the viewBox
var viewBox = svg.viewBox.baseVal;

function onPointerMove (event) {
  if (!isPointerDown) {
    return;
  }
  event.preventDefault();

  // Get the pointer position as an SVG Point
  var pointerPosition = getPointFromEvent(event);

  // Update the viewBox variable with the distance from origin and current position
  // We don't need to take care of a ratio because this is handled in the getPointFromEvent function
  viewBox.x -= (pointerPosition.x - pointerOrigin.x);
  viewBox.y -= (pointerPosition.y - pointerOrigin.y);
}

And here is the final demo. See how much shorter the code is now? 😀

See the Pen Demo Bonus – SVG Panning by Louis Hoebregts (@Mamboleoo) on CodePen.

Conclusion

This solution is definitely not the only way to go to handle such behavior. If you are already using a library to deal with your SVGs, it may already have a built-in function to handle it.

I hope this article may help you to understand a bit more how powerful SVG can be! Feel free to contribute to the code by commenting with your ideas or alternatives to this solution.

Credits

• Bird designed by Freepik
• A big thanks to Blake for his precious help and all the nice folks from the AAA Slack for their feedback.

The post Creating a Panning Effect for SVG appeared first on CSS-Tricks.