CSS-Native Parallax Effect

100 points by dandep 6 hours ago on hackernews | 46 comments

That sounds interesting but it would be a whole lot more interesting if the page was itself an example of said effect!

: dsmurrell | 5 hours ago
I was also looking for examples.
: yashD18 | 4 hours ago
i was waiting for the effect to show up
: jonahx | 2 hours ago
Or even linked to one!
: sourcecodeplz | 24 minutes ago
I've put together an example here but it doesn't seem to work in Firefox 151.0.2 (64-bit): https://favs.eu.org/parallax/
Edit: if the body has class="no-sda", it uses a js fallback.

A demo https://codepen.io/editor/phelm/pen/019e87f5-dfec-7372-9849-...

There's me scrolling up and down and thinking "hey, it's not working!" But it's behind a flag on Firefox: https://caniuse.com/?search=view-timeline-name

anssip | 6 hours ago

Noticed the same thing. In Mac Safari it works without setting any flags.

werdnapk | 5 hours ago

It's been behind a flag for ages. Maybe because of performance issues?

: goodmythical | an hour ago
Enabling (layout.css.scroll-driven-animations.enabled) and refreshing the codepen gives a "we crashed this to prevent a crash from an infinite loop" clicking to allow the infinite loops allowed me to see the animation.
Fedora 44 Kernel: x86_64 Linux 7.0.10-201.fc44.x86_64 Firefox 151.0.2

WithinReason | 5 hours ago

tried 4 browsers, didn't work in any of them

alpinisme | 5 hours ago

FWIW it works on iPhone safari

: abejfehr | 4 hours ago
I don’t think it did for me. Are you on iOS 26?
: layer8 | 4 hours ago
Only on iOS 26.
: deckar01 | an hour ago
But it jumps around and flickers pretty bad. Chrome’s own demos in the docs don’t work at all.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/scroll-driven-anima...
Edit: Their reference works and has some really nice demos. Must be an iframe problem. https://scroll-driven-animations.style/#demos

wnevets | 5 hours ago

Doesnt work on any browser for me

frereubu | 4 hours ago

For people saying it's not working in any browser - do you have some kind of reduced motion preference setting turned on? I can imagine that would have an effect on something like this and it's definitely working in Chrome for me.

: cj | 3 hours ago
Yes... there's a media query in the codepen disabling animation for people with reduced motion enabled.

account42 | 6 hours ago

What an age where we need a pile of javascript as well as a bot check to demo a simple CSS trick.

: zamadatix | 5 hours ago
The JS and bot check are for making additional functionality, beyond just showing the example, work easily. I.e. editing and sharing edits from a browser. If all you want is a static example, feel free to make it without these things.

Mashimo | 5 hours ago

Only worked for me on mobile (vivaldi android) not on vivaldi / chrome / edge on Desktop.

mpeg | 6 hours ago

How does this compare to the classic css-native parallax effect? Before the scroll timeline APIs you'd use the "perspective" css property to create a container where the z plane is n pixels away from the screen, and then position each layer within it at a different z distance using transform: translateZ

That method is GPU accelerated too, so it is performant compared to some js solutions, and has worked well in every browser for around a decade

I like the idea of the scroll-timeline though, just keen to understand what the advantage is for this

: iainmerrick | 6 hours ago
I was wondering the same thing. That translateZ is a bit fiddly to get right, so I could believe this is a bit easier to use, maybe? And presumably this could be used for other properties besides position, like colors, opacity or blurs.
: som | 5 hours ago
No doubt quite a few folk with the same question. Keen to understand performance tradeoffs.
Obvious comparison note would be that the "new" method currently enjoys somewhat limited browser support (no Firefox without a flag, and only since Safari 26)
: [OP] dandep | 4 hours ago
OP here, thanks for asking. While the `perspective` technique works too, it has the downside of needing a careful combination of scroller elements and properties.
This approach adds a single class to the image container and that's it. Plus you can control many aspects of the animation such as entry/exit ranges, and make it control other properties like opacity or color, for example.
I know browser support is still lacking, but it will get there eventually. I'm not using this in production code yet, but I think it's useful to experiment with these new CSS APIs.
: semolino | an hour ago
This method should still support GPU acceleration, as `transform` (or rotate/scale/etc.) is the only property being animated. The benefit of animation-timeline seems to be that it's much easier to set up than a CSS perspective context.

thomasikzelf | 5 hours ago

You can make some really cool stuff with css scroll animations. I used SVG paths with a scroll animated dash offset to draw an image while scrolling. Zero javascript, it feels so smooth. https://thomaswelter.nl (the background)

rsyring | 5 hours ago

Android Firefox: there is no background image.

: thomasikzelf | 4 hours ago
firefox android does not support CSS animation-timeline, and firefox desktop needs layout.css.scroll-driven-animations.enabled. This probably should not be used for any critical features.

apsurd | 38 minutes ago

oh that's cool!

Can only see it on chrome though =/. I switched to Safari as the lesser of two data-harvesting evils. Or rather, with an iPhone I've already chosen my overlord. I also switched to Kagi. Trying to deGoogle myself.

rohitsriram | 5 hours ago

Love the one-variable design where scale and translate stay in sync automatically, just wish Firefox would get off the flag already.

: [OP] dandep | 4 hours ago
Thanks!

duskdozer | 5 hours ago

In a world where it's increasingly overlooked, I'm glad the author mentions disabling it respecting user settings. I do think it should be reversed and only enabled with the `@media (prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference)`, but that is the opinion of someone who gets negative value from animations and is bemused by how much dev and compute time is spent on them.

sillyboi | 5 hours ago

It would be awesome to put an interactive example right in the article.

i_am_a_peasant | 4 hours ago

Idk about anyone here but I find the effect disorienting.

: amon_spek | 4 hours ago
Yes. I'm a little more sensitive than average, but not enough to turn off animations, and this is uncomfortable.

mrcsmcln | 4 hours ago

I played around with this API some time ago. It’s simple and high-performance, but one feature I wish existed is damping. Scroll-driven animations are tied directly to the scroll timeline, so there’s no concept of the parallax object “catching up” to the scroll progress over, say, one second. From what I remember, `animation-timing-function` feels weird when you scroll, so it’s not the right solution. GSAP offers this, but it’s JS-only.

albert_e | 3 hours ago

could this be combined with a sprite like image that shows a slightly different angle of the image with each step

Theodores | 3 hours ago

Great. I tried the Google examples a while ago and got nowhere with it, time for another go, within the netherworld of SVG, to map to several different layers.

Semaphor | 3 hours ago

This [0] seems to be the main meta bug, with [1] being for CSS and [2] for JS, for FF to ship it without the flag. There seems to be slow work towards it, kinda funny that FF was the first browser to have it (flag-gated, according to CIU) and now is the only one without it in stable ;)

[0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1676779

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1676780

[2]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1676781

tantalor | 2 hours ago

Hey, where's the demo?

thecaio | 2 hours ago

there is a special place in hell for pages like these that don't show examples

sheept | an hour ago

A parallax effect has also long been possible with CSS 3D transforms. Here's a demo,[0][1] from the same person who made that CSS 3D FPS a while ago.[2]

[0]: https://www.keithclark.co.uk/articles/pure-css-parallax-webs...

[1]: blog: https://www.keithclark.co.uk/articles/pure-css-parallax-webs...

[2]: https://www.keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/

Onplana | an hour ago

I was expecting a demo on the linked page itself. Interesting to let Codex or Claude Code do it :)

geuis | an hour ago

Using css perspective for parallax has been around for years and is much simpler code.

hit8run | an hour ago

I get motion sickness from this specific effect. Especially on high refresh rate screens.