AliceJS - (A Lightweight Independent CSS Engine) is a micro JavaScript library focused on using hardware-accelerated capabilities (in particular CSS3 features) in modern browsers for generating high-quality, high-end visual effects.

The smoothness of your animation depends on the frame rate of your animation. Frame rate is measured in frames per second (fps). Film usually runs at 24fps, video at 30fps. The higher this number is, the smoother your animation will look…to a point. More frames, means more processing, which can often cause stuttering and skipping. This is what is meant by the term dropping frames. Because most screens have a refresh rate of 60Hz, the fastest frame rate you should aim for is 60fps. Time for some math!

Enter the Image Sequence. An Image Sequence is exactly what it sounds like, a series of images, each representing a single frame of an animation. Usually these will be exported from a high-level application like Adobe After Effects. For memory and performance reasons, these images are usually combined into a single Sprite Sheet. You may have heard of this technique, because we've been using it for decades.

animate.css is a bunch of cool, fun, and cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects. Great for emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness.

The most exciting engineering challenges lie on the boundary of theory and the unknown. Not so unknown that they're hopeless, but not enough theory to predict the results of our decisions. Systems at this boundary often rely on emergent behavior — high-level effects that arise indirectly from low-level interactions.

steps() is a relatively new addition to the CSS3 animations module. Instead of interpolating the values smoothly, it allows us to define the number of “frames” precisely. So I used it to create headers that have the well-known animated “typing effect”:

A quick proof-of-concept using CSS3 animations. Only works in Webkit. Looks extra-smooth in Safari. I'll clean it up, make it work with everything, and release it a little later on.