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For drawing and painting digital illustrations, Adobe Illustrator is a favorite among designers for many reasons. One of the reasons is some of the amazing time-saving features that come with it. The Symbols feature in Illustrator does just this: it saves valuable time by creating a “symbol,� or copy, of an object. This means that all of the time you have spent creating a minutely detailed flower does not have to be repeated. Instead, simply save the flower as a symbol for future use. Plus, symbols greatly reduce the size of image files.

Illustrator makes it easy to use symbols multiple times within a document as well. With the Symbols tools, you can add and alter several symbols at once. And in CS5, you can now change the settings for a symbol while editing. Another benefit of symbols in Illustrator CS5 is that you can change a symbol to a movie clip, making it easy to export to Adobe Flash. You can also make sure that the symbol scales correctly for your interface design by choosing 9-Slice Scaling while still in Illustrator.

CS5 makes working with symbols even easier by adding a few new features, explained below. If you are working in an earlier version of Illustrator, you will still be able to follow along and become as much a master of symbols in Illustrator as the next guy.

The topics covered in this article are:

1. Basic Symbol Use
   • Symbols panel 101
   • Creating symbols
   • Symbol libraries
   • Placing symbols
   • Breaking links
   • Changing symbol options
   • Adding or duplicating symbols
   • Deleting symbols
   • Redefine a symbol
   • Swap/replace a symbol
2. Advanced Symbol Use
   • Control window
   • Editing as a graphic
   • Registration point edits
   • 9-Slice Scaling edits
   • Sub-layer for symbols
3. Symbolism Tools
   • Symbol sets
   • Symbol Sprayer tool
   • Symbol Shifter tool
   • Symbol Scruncher tool
   • Symbol Sizer tool
   • Symbol Spinner tool
   • Symbol Stainer tool
   • Symbol Screener tool
   • Symbol Styler tool
4. Symbolism Tools Advanced Options
   • Options available to all symbol tools
   • Symbol Sprayer options
   • Symbol Sizer options
5. Make Symbols Your Best Friend
   • More resources

Basic Symbol Use

Some of the actions for Symbols are quite easy to figure out just by playing around with them, while others take some explanation. Below is an overview of how to use symbols, but remember that you can move, scale, rotate, reflect and skew (shear) symbols just like other objects.

Symbols Panel 101

To open the Symbols panel, click on the button that looks like a clover, located in the menu on the right side of the Illustrator screen. Or go to Window → Symbols. As always the case with Adobe software, there are several ways to complete a task with Symbols.

The drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the Symbols panel offers access to nearly every action for the panel, including creating a symbol, editing a symbol, breaking links, changing the view in the panel and more. To save you time, along the bottom of the Symbols panel are a few shortcuts to the most commons actions. You can also use the options in the Control window at the top of the screen.

To select a symbol in the panel, click on the icon. With a symbol selected, you can now edit it, place it on your artboard, delete it and more.

You can also organize the symbols in the panel by clicking and dragging them around. Or choose “Sort by Name� to change the view of the icons from within the drop-down menu.

Creating Symbols

Nearly any object can be made into a symbol. A couple of exceptions are art that is not linked and groups of graphics. Make sure the Symbols panel is open.

Click on the “New Symbols� icon (it looks like two white squares, one smaller than the other) at the bottom of the Symbols window, or drag an object directly into the Symbols panel. Illustrator will automatically turn the object you have selected into a symbol and also add the object to the Symbols window.

If you do not want your original object to become a symbol, then hold down Shift while creating the new symbol. This allows you to quickly create a symbol while retaining editable work on your artboard.

In the Symbols dialog box that appears, first specify a name, one that you will easily remember later.

Next, select the “Type� of symbol you want to create: a graphic or movie clip. If you will be using the symbol only in Illustrator, it does not matter which you select. The only reason why the two options are available is if you want to use the symbol in Adobe Flash: a movie-clip symbol in Flash can be manipulated for animation purposes, while a graphic symbol in Flash will remain static.

Symbol Libraries

The Symbol Libraries provide a clean way to organize the symbols that you acquire. To open them, click on the Symbols Library menu in the far left of your Symbols tools, or go to Window → Symbol Libraries → [symbol]. The library that you select will open in a new window. When you choose a symbol from an open library, it is automatically added to the Symbols panel.

Remember that you can change the symbol once it is in your panel, but the original symbol in the library will never change.

Adding symbols from the panel to your library is easy but can be confusing at first. Begin by deleting any symbols that you do not want to add. (To quickly remove unused symbols, choose “Select All Unusedâ€� from the Symbols panel menu.) Then choose “Save Symbolsâ€� from the Symbols Library menu button, or go to the Symbols panel menu and select “Save Symbol Library.â€� Name your symbol library, and save it to the default Symbols folder. You can now find your new library folder in Symbols Library Menu → User Defined → [symbol].

Note: You can create a new library from any symbols, whether default Illustrator symbols or your own. Just drag the desired symbols into the Symbols panel, and follow the steps above to create a new library.

Saving symbol libraries in locations other than the default library folder enables you to more easily share your created symbols with other designers. First, create your library as explained in the section above. When you get to the step where Illustrator asks you to choose a name and location for your library, choose a location other than the default folder (such as the desktop or “My Documents�). Remember that you can always access the symbols in this alternate location when working in Illustrator by choosing “Other Library� from the Symbols Library menu.

Placing Symbols

To place a symbol on your artboard, simply click on the icon in the panel and drag the symbol onto your board, or select the Symbol icon in the panel and then click the “Place Symbol Instance� button. Dragging the symbol is helpful if you have a specific place for it, whereas the “Place Symbol Instance� button works well when you want to place several on the board but are not yet sure where.

Breaking Links

The “Break Link to Symbol� button simply turns the symbol that you’ve placed on your artboard back into a regular graphic. While changes such as move, scale, rotate, reflect and skew (shear) can be made to a symbol’s instance on the artboard without changing the original symbol in the panel, more advanced edits will affect both the instance and the symbol if they are linked. By clicking on the “Break Link to Symbol� button, you can now modify the symbol in the panel without affecting the graphic on your artboard. The opposite is also true: edits made to an instance with a broken link will no longer affect the symbol.

Changing Symbol Options

The “Symbol Options� button opens the Options dialog box, where you can change the symbol to “Graphic� or “Movie Clip,� change it to 9-Slice Scaling, and make the symbol automatically align to a grid. See the section above on “Creating Symbols� for more explanation. You can also change the name, which is helpful if you duplicate a symbol.

Adding or Duplicating Symbols

The “New Symbol� button allows you to change a selected object into a symbol. Or, to quickly duplicate a symbol, just select it in the panel and drag it onto the “New Symbol� button. Illustrator will automatically name it the original symbol’s name plus a number, such as “Cube 1,� but you can change the name with the Options button.

Drag the symbol to the “New Symbol� button.

A new symbol will appear with a numbered name.

Deleting Symbols

Drag a symbol onto the Delete button to delete it from the panel. This will not delete it from your library, so if you need to use it again, just open the library and drag it back onto the panel. You can also click on the “Delete� button when a symbol is selected to delete it; a dialog box will appear asking “Delete the selected symbol?�

If you delete a symbol that has instances on the artboard, an alert dialog box will appear saying that the symbol cannot be deleted until its instance in use is either deleted or expanded. Choose “Expand Instances� to break the link to the symbol; this option will turn the instance on the artboard into a regular graphic and will delete the symbol from the panel. Choose “Delete Instances� to remove the instance from the artboard and delete the symbol from the panel.

Redefine Symbol

“Redefine Symbols� (located in the drop-down menu of the Symbols panel) allows you to change a symbol to the selected graphic on your artboard. Keep in mind that this action will change only the appearance of the symbol, while the name and other options (such as the type) will remain the same.

With the symbol selected on the artboard, select one of the previously defined symbols in the Symbols panel. In this example, we have selected the bow-tie symbol.

The bow-tie symbol now looks like the grime symbol, but the name and other options remain unchanged.

Swap/Replace a Symbol

To swap a symbol with another, select the symbol on your artboard, then select the symbol icon in the panel that you want to use in its place. From the drop-down menu, select “Replace Symbol.�

2. Advanced Symbol Use

Symbols can be edited several ways. In fact, CS5 now offers more editing options than previous versions of Illustrator, including 9-Slice Scaling (see below) and much more.

Control Window

One way to edit symbols is with the options in the Control window, located along the top (or bottom, depending on how you have arranged your Illustrator window) of your artboard. Simply click on the symbol that you want to edit, and you will notice that many of the Control window options for symbols are similar to the options for other objects, such as “Opacity,� “Recolor Artwork,� “Transform� and “Align to Selection.� You might also notice that you can break links and replace symbols from this menu.

The Control window’s options change depending on what type of graphic is selected, so some of these options are available to normal graphics, while others are exclusive to symbols.

To undo transformations, just select the symbol on the artboard and click “Reset� on the Control window; or choose “Reset Transformation� from the drop-down menu in the Symbols panel; or simply right-click on the symbol’s instance on the artboard and choose “Reset Transformation� from the context menu.

Editing as a Graphic

To edit a symbol with your primary editing tools just as you would any other graphic, click on a symbol in the panel (or, to be safe, duplicate the symbol and then edit the duplication), and select “Edit Symbol� in the drop-down menu. (Alternatively, double-click on the symbol in the panel.) You will now be able to modify the symbol in your panel as well as any instances on your artboard.

To modify only the instance(s) on your artboard and not the symbol in your panel, select the instance(s) on the artboard and break the link first. The instance will now be regular artwork that you can edit using any tool in the Tool menu.

You can always turn your edited graphic back into a new symbol by selecting the graphic and clicking “New Symbol� in the symbol’s palette.

To break links to all symbol instances at once, select the symbol’s icon in the Symbols panel, then choose “Select All Instances� from the drop-down menu.

You can also edit all symbol instances along with the symbol in the panel. Simply double-click the symbol on the artboard; or select the instance and click the “Edit Symbol� button in the Control window; or select “Edit Symbol� from the fly-out menu. An alert dialog box will appear, warning you that you are about to edit the symbol and that any changes will be made to all instances of that symbol.

You can choose “OK� or “Cancel.� This means what it says: all instances and the symbol in the panel will be changed according to the edits you make while in this “Isolation Mode.� Check the “Don’t Show Again� checkbox to prevent this warning from appearing again.

To exit the Edit Symbol mode, click on the “Back� arrow in the edit bar at the top of the artboard, or hit the “Escape� key. You can also right-click on the instance that you are editing and choose “Exit Isolation Mode.�

Registration Point Edits

In CS5, editing the registration point of symbols is possible. For those of you familiar with Flash, no more explanation is needed. For those who know nothing of Flash, the registration point basically allows you to select where to place the anchor point, which determines how a symbol will be placed within a screen coordinate.

One time when the registration grid makes a difference in Illustrator is when rotating symbols. If your registration is set to the upper-right corner of your symbol, then the symbol will rotate around that corner. You can see the location of the registration point simply by selecting the symbol on the artboard using the Selection tool. It looks like a small crosshair.

You can set the registration point by selecting a point on the registration grid when you create a new symbol. In the example below, the registration is set to the bottom-left corner. The default is centered. Just click the “New Symbol� button, and the Symbol options dialog box will pop up.

To edit the registration point or to fine tune the location, simply double-click the symbol on the artboard, and you will enter Isolation Mode. Move the graphic around; the registration point will remain stationary. When finished, click the “Back� button in the Control window. In this example, the symbol has been moved to the left, which has the effect of shifting the registration point to the right on the symbol.

Illustrator automatically uses the registration grid’s settings on a symbol, but you can turn this off. Say that you want to set the registration point to the left side of a symbol for Flash purposes, but while in Illustrator you do not want to use the grid. With the symbol selected, click on “Transform� in the Control window. Then click on the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the Transform panel. From this menu, select “Use Registration Point for Symbol.� With it deselected, this setting is now off.

9-Slice Scaling Edits

You can select 9-Slice Scaling for a symbol, either when you first create it or later through the Symbol options.

You can also edit the 9-Slice Scaling grid on a symbol when in “Edit (Isolation) Mode.� Double-click the symbol on the artboard to enter “Edit (Isolation) Mode.� Then hover the Selection tool over any of the gridlines until it changes to the move cursor.

Sub-Layers for Symbols

In CS5, you can now create sub-layers for symbols. The reason this is possible is that CS5 has given symbols an independent layer hierarchy, even when you expand symbols. Also, the “Paste Remember Layers� setting works when pasting objects in the symbol’s Edit Mode.

3. Symbolism Tools

One of the best aspects of symbols in Illustrator is the Symbol tools (referred to as “Symbolism Tools� by Adobe). Using symbol sets and the tools available, designing even the most detailed graphics is quick and easy.

Symbol Sets

Although you can use the Symbolism tools in a single symbol’s instance, they really shine when you use them with symbol sets. A symbol set is a group of symbol instances, often sprayed onto the artboard using the Symbol Sprayer tool. To select an entire set, just click on that symbol’s icon in your panel, or click on more than one symbol icon to select more than one symbol set.

In this example, a symbol has been sprayed onto the artboard. To select the set, simply use the Selection tool, and click on any of the symbols.

Symbol Sprayer Tool

With the Symbol Sprayer tool, you can add single instances, add single or multiple sets of instances, and delete individual or sets of symbol instances. To spray symbol instances onto the artboard, select the symbol from the panel, select the Symbol Sprayer tool from the toolbar, and click to add one instance at a time, or drag to spray several at a time.

To delete symbols from the artboard, hold down Alt or Option while clicking or dragging on the instances that you want to remove.

Symbol Shifter Tool

To move entire sets of symbols, use the Symbol Shifter tool. Just select the set or individual symbol instances that you want to shift, and with the Symbol Shifter tool selected, drag the instances in any direction on the board. You can also change the stacking order of symbols with this tool. Simply hold down Shift while clicking on an instance or a set to move it forward. Hold down Alt/Option + Shift while clicking on an instance or set to move it backward.

Symbol Scruncher Tool

The Scruncher tool is helpful for when you want to adjust the space between symbols in a set. To move symbol instances closer together, select the Symbol Scruncher tool, and click or drag in the areas between symbols. To push symbols apart, hold down Alt/Option while clicking or dragging between symbols.

Symbol Sizer Tool

Quickly resize entire sets of symbols by selecting the Symbol Sizer tool and then clicking or dragging on the symbols in the set that you want to resize. Keep in mind that only those symbols within the brush’s dimensions will change size. To decrease in size, hold down Alt/Option while clicking or dragging on symbol instances.

Hold down Shift while clicking or dragging the tool over several symbols in the set to preserve their density. You have to be careful with this shortcut, though. If you are enlarging symbols and hold down Shift, they will often be deleted to keep the density the same. But if you are downsizing symbols and use the Shift key, more symbols of the same size will be added to the set.

Symbol Spinner Tool

Another way to create variety in a symbol set made up of the same symbols is to select the Symbol Spinner tool and rotate the symbols in different directions. Click on a group of symbols and drag and rotate the cursor to turn the symbols in different directions.

Keep in mind that, just as when using the Rotate tool on symbol instances, with the Symbol Spinner tool, instances in a set will rotate based on the registration grid settings. So, if you’ve selected the upper-right corner of the registration grid when creating symbols, then your symbols will “lock� on the upper-right corner and rotate around that locked position.

Symbol Stainer Tool

This is an incredible tool for creating a naturally random color variety within a symbol set. It uses both the color’s hue and luminosity to “stain� symbol instances. Therefore, both black symbols (low luminosity) and white symbols (high luminosity) do not change at all; the higher or lower the luminosity, the less drastic the change in color.

First, you will need to select a staining color from the Color panel. With the Symbol Stainer tool selected, click or drag across the symbol instances that you want to colorize. If you want to reverse the stain effect, hold down Alt/Option and click or drag across symbols.

With the Stainer tool, the longer you hold it over a symbol set, the greater the amount of tint change. But if you want the same amount of tint no matter how much you drag the tool across a symbol set, hold down Shift. This works well when you want to change an entire set to a new shade without much variation.

Symbol Screener Tool

To change the transparency of symbol instances, select the Symbol Screener tool and click or drag across symbols. Hold down Alt/Option to reverse the transparency effect.

In this example, we have duplicated the Symbol layer several times and used the Symbol Stainer tool to add color depth. The Symbol Screen tool allows us to tone down the effect.

Symbol Styler Tool

The Symbol Styler tool allows you to add or remove graphic styles from symbol instances. First, select the Symbol Styler tool (if you select a graphic style first, then Illustrator will apply the graphic style to the entire selected symbol set). Then choose a graphic style from the Graphic Styles panel by going to Window → Graphic Styles, and click or drag across symbol instances for a gradual increase in a graphic style.

Hold down Alt/Option while clicking or dragging to reverse the style effect. Keep in mind that if you want to keep the graphic style changes the same throughout the symbol set, hold down Shift while using the Symbol Styler tool.

Here, we’ve opened a standard Graphics Style library called Illuminate Styles, by going to Windows → Graphic Styles Library → Illuminate Styles.

4. Symbolism Tools Advanced Options

To access the Symbolism tool’s options, double-click on any of the tools. It doesn’t matter which tool you double-click, because all of them can be accessed from the Options dialog box.

Options Available to All Symbolism Tools

At the top of the dialog box are options that stay the same, no matter which tool is selected. Some are fairly self-explanatory. “Diameter� determines the brush size. “Intensity� sets the change rate. “Symbol Set Density� sets the amount of symbols placed within a given area based on a formula; the higher the number, the denser the symbols will be.

“Method� (not available for all tools) adjusts the symbol’s instances: “User Defined� allows a gradual adjustment, determined by the location of the cursor; “Random� adjusts the symbols at a random rate; and “Average� smoothens the symbols gradually. Select “Show Brush Size and Intensity� to see these options while using the tools.

Click on each of the tool icons within the options dialog box to see individual adjustments and shortcuts. Not all of the tools have adjustments, and not all have shortcuts.

Symbol Sprayer Options

The Symbol Sprayer tool contains the most options. All six options contain two choices: “User Defined� and “Average.� If you already have symbol instances in place, the “Average� setting allows the sprayer to spray according to the settings of instances within the brush’s area. For example, with “Average� as the setting, spraying next to instances with variegated sizes will cause your symbol’s instances to spray in variegated sizes, depending on which ones fall within the brush’s radius.

“User Defined� means that the sprayer will place symbols using preset settings:

• “Scrunchâ€�: The density based on the size of the original symbol.
• “Sizeâ€�: Once again, based on the original symbol size.
• “Spinâ€�: Symbols will orient themselves based on the movement of the mouse.
• “Screenâ€�: 100% opacity automatically.
• “Stainâ€�: A full amount of tint and the current color of the symbol.
• “Styleâ€�: This is determined by the current style of the symbol.

Symbol Sizer Options

The Symbol Sizer options include only two choices. When the “Proportional Resizing� checkbox is selected, the symbol instance’s size will remain uniform when resizing. When “Resizing Affects Density� is selected, the symbol’s instances will move further away when enlarged and closer together when shrunk.

5. Make Symbols Your Best Friend

If you plan to create illustrations that repeat a lot of graphics, such as trees, grass, flowers, floating shapes and swirls, to name a few, then symbols should become your best friend in Illustrator. Rather than just copying and pasting a graphic that you have created, you can use a symbol to quickly spray hundreds to millions of copies on your artboard and make changes to them in a matter of minutes. Even if you have used symbols before, taking the time to really play around with them and maybe even following some tutorials will help you grasp this gem of an Illustrator tool.

More Resources

• “Learn Illustrator CS5: Working with Symbols More Easilyâ€�
  This video shows a few examples of how useful the registration grid and 9-Slice Scaling can be in Illustrator CS5.
• “Using Adobe Illustrator CS5: Symbolsâ€�
  This PDF help document is an excellent resource to bookmark for basic how-to questions on anything in Illustrator CS5, including Symbols.
• “Illustrator Symbol Sprayer: Use and Hints and Tips Tutorialâ€�
  Learn how to use the Symbol Sprayer in this basic video on Illustrator CS5. The video includes an overview of the other Symbolism tools as well.
• “How to Use the Symbol Tool in Illustratorâ€�
  See how to use symbols to add leaves to a tree in Illustrator. This video is full of hints and tips on working with the Symbolism tools.

(al) (il)

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© Tara Hornor for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Created by Ryan Dahl in 2009, Node.js is a relatively new technology which has gained a lot of popularity among Web developers recently. However, not everyone knows what it really is. Node.js is essentially a server-side JavaScript environment that uses an asynchronous event-driven model. What this means is simple: it’s an environment which is intended for writing scalable, high performance network applications. It’s like Ruby’s Event Machine or Python’s Twisted, but it takes the event model a bit further—it presents the event loop as a language construct instead of as a library.

And that’s not all: what’s really great about Node.js is the thousands of modules available for any purpose, as well as the vibrant community behind this young project. In this round-up, you will find the most useful resources for Node.js, from handy tools to detailed tutorials, not to mention in-depth articles and resources on this promising technology. Do you use Node.js already? Let us know in the comments to this post!

Useful Node.js Tools

Node Express Boilerplate
Node Express Boilerplate gives the developer a clean slate, while bundling enough useful features to remove all of those redundant tasks that can derail a project before it even gets started.

Socket.IO
Socket.IO is a cross-browser Web socket that aims to make real-time apps possible in every browser and mobile device, blurring the distinctions between the various transport mechanisms. It’s care-free real time, in JavaScript.

Mastering Node
With Mastering Node, you can write high-concurrency Web servers, using the CommonJS module system, Node.js’s core libraries, third-party modules, high-level Web development and more.

Log.io
Your infrastructure may have hundreds of log files spread across dozens of machines. To help you monitor deployments and troubleshoot, Log.io lets you instantly see composite streams of log messages in a single user interface.

Formaline
Formaline is a low-level, full-featured (Node.js) module for handling form requests (HTTP POSTs and PUTs) and for parsing uploaded files quickly. It is also ready to use with, for example, middleware such as Connect.

LDAPjs
LDAPjs is a pure-JavaScript, from-scratch framework for implementing LDAP clients and servers in Node.js. It is intended for developers who are used to interacting with HTTP services in Node.js and Express.

Node Supervisor
This is a little supervisor script for Node.js. It runs your program and watches for code changes, so you can have hot-code reloading-ish behavior without worrying about memory leaks or having to clean up all of the inter-module references, and without a whole new require system.

Jade – Template Engine
Jade is a template engine for Node.js applications. It combines great power and flexibility with a nice and clean syntax.

Express
This is a Sinatra-inspired Web development framework for Node.js: fast, flexible and sexy.

Hook.io
hook.io creates a distributed node.js EventEmitter that works cross-process / cross-platform / cross-browser. Think of it like a real-time event bus that works anywhere JavaScript is supported.

Node Package Manager
NPM is a package manager for node. You can use it to install and publish your node programs. It manages dependencies and does other cool stuff.

Node-QRcode
Despite being quite young, Node.js already has a huge number of libraries for every possible application. This one is a QR code generator.

NWM
NWM is a dynamic window manager for X that was written at NodeKO 2011. It uses libev to interface with X11, and it allows you to lay out windows in Node.js.

Bricks.js
Bricks.js is an advanced modular Web framework built on Node.js. It is highly flexible. Bricks.js can be used as a standalone static Web server, a basic routing framework or a multi-level Apache-like routing system; and it is modular enough to have the capability to completely switch out its routing engine.

Node.js Modules
A list of almost all the Node.js most famous modules organized by category. This list definitively is worth a look.

90 open-source Node.js modules
Recently, Browserling released over 90 Node.js modules to the open-source community. Some of them are small and strange modules, others might be pretty useful for your next Node.js project.

Calipso
Calipso is a content management system (CMS) based on the NodeJS server.

PDFKit
PDFKit is a PDF document-generation library for Node.js that makes it easy to create complex, multi-page, printable documents. It is written in pure CoffeeScript, but you can use the API in plain ’ol JavaScript if you like. The API embraces chain-ability, and it includes both low-level functions as well as abstractions for higher-level functionality.

Forever
A simple CLI tool to ensure that a given script runs continuously (i.e. forever).

Introducing Node.js

Node.js Step by Step
Node.js is an amazing new technology, but unless you’re a JavaScript developer, the process of becoming acquainted with it can quickly become a bit overwhelming. If you want to learn how to use Node.js, this set of articles and screencasts might do the trick.

What Is Node.js?
Another interesting discussion on StackOverflow about what Node.js is and is not. Recommended for those who are approaching Node.js for the first time.

Learning Server-Side JavaScript
Node.js is all the buzz at the moment, and it makes creating high-performance, real-time Web applications easy. It allows JavaScript to be used end to end, on both the server and client. This tutorial walks you through from installing Node.js and writing your first “Hello World� program to building a scalable streaming Twitter server.

Node.js Is Important: An Introduction
“Once in a while, you come across a technology and are blown away by it. You feel that something like this should have been around much earlier and that it will be a significant milestone, not just in your own life as a developer but in general.

The Secrets of Node’s Success
In the short time since its initial release in late 2009, Node.js has captured the interest of thousands of experienced developers, grown a package manager and a corpus of interesting modules and applications, and even spawned a number of start-ups. What is it about this technology that makes it interesting to developers? And why has it succeeded while other server-side JavaScript implementations linger in obscurity or fail altogether?

Asynchronous Code Design with Node.js
The asynchronous event-driven I/O of Node.js is currently evaluated by many enterprises as a high-performance alternative to the traditional synchronous I/O of multi-threaded enterprise application server. The asynchronous nature means that enterprise developers have to learn new programming patterns, and unlearn old ones

A Giant Step Backwards?
In this article, Fenn Bailey expresses his opinion of Node.js and why he sometimes thinks Node.js is a step backward compared to other solutions.

Node.js Is Backwards
A hot topic in computing is parallel programming in languages such as Erlang. Will JavaScript join the party?

Videos And Screencasts On Node.js

Node.js Meetup: Distributed Web Architectures
A series of videos from the Node.js Meetup at Joyent headquarters, discussing how to build distributed Web architectures with Node.js.

Introduction to Node.js with Ryan Dahl
In this presentation Ryan Dahl, the man behind Node.js will introduce you to this event-driven I/O framework with a few examples showing Node.js in action.

SenchaCon 2010: Server-side JavaScript with Node, Connect & Express on Vimeo
Node.js has unleashed a new wave of interest in server side Javascript. In this session, you’ll learn how to get productive with node.js by leveraging Connect and Express node middleware.

Technical Articles And Tutorials On Node.js

Proxying HTTP and Web Sockets in Node
This guide is geared to beginners and people who are unfamiliar with reverse HTTP proxying, Web socket proxying, load balancing, virtual host configuration, request forwarding and other Web proxying concepts.

Bulletproof Node.js Coding
“Right around the time that I started the third refactoring/rewrite of the code, I felt like I had gotten a feel for how to write bulletproof code, and I thought it would be worth sharing some of the style and conventions I came to adopt.�

How to Write a Native Node.js Extension
In this tutorial, you will learn how to write a native Node.js extension the right way, from the very basics to packaging the extension for NPM.

Let’s Make a Web App: Nodepad
This series will walk you through building a Web app with Node.js, covering all of the major areas you’ll face when building your own applications.

HTML5 Canvas Drawing with Web Sockets, Node.JS and Socket.io
Web sockets and canvas are two really cool features that are currently being implemented in browsers. This tutorial gives you a quick rundown of how they both work, and you’ll create a real-time drawing canvas that is powered by Node.js and Web sockets.

Developing Multiplayer HTML5 Games with Node.js
Inspired by the famous iOS game Osmos, developer Boris Smus has created an alternative version of the game using HTML5 canvas and Node.js. This article explains the main phases of the project.

Deploying Node.js on Amazon EC2
Amazon’s EC2 is a popular choice for cloud applications. This tutorial shows how Node.js can be deployed on an EC2 instance.

A Simple Node.js + CouchDB Calendar
In this tutorial by Chris Storm, you will learn how to build a Web calendar with Node.js and CouchDB.

IIS7
The IISnode project provides a native IIS 7.x module that enables hosting of Node.js applications on IIS. The project uses the Windows build of node.exe, which has recently seen major improvements.

Node.js + Phone to Control a Browser Game
Someone wondered how easily a smart phone – specifically using its gyroscopes and accelerometers – could be used as a controller for a multi-player game on a larger screen. With a bit of Node.js and HTML5 magic, it turned out to be pretty simple.

Is There a Template Engine for Node.js?
An engaging discussion appeared on StackOverflow about the template engines that are available for Node.js. Really useful arguments came out of this discussion.

Blogs, Podcasts, Resources On Node.js

How to Node
How to Node is a community-supported blog created by Tim Caswell. Its purpose is to teach how to do various tasks in Node.js and the fundamental concepts needed to write effective code.

Nodejitsu
A really interesting blog about scaling Node.js apps in the cloud and about the Node.js events in general.

Node Up
A podcast that reviews Node.js, explains its philosophy and goes over many of its popular libraries.

Node Tuts
Free screencast tutorials.

Minute With Node.js
Node.js is constantly changing and growing with each new version. New libraries and frameworks are coming out daily that allow you to write JavaScript for new and exciting projects that were previously impossible. This is a one-stop shop for news updates on the entire Node.js eco-system, with a heavy slant on hardcore nerdery.

Felix’s Node.js Guide
Over the past few months, Felix have given a lot of talks and done a lot of consulting on Node.js. He found himself repeating a lot of things over and over, so he used some of his recent vacation to start this opinionated and unofficial guide to help people getting started in Node.js.

Node.js Knockout
Node.js Knockout is a 48-hour hackathon for Node.js. It’s an online virtual competition, with contestants worldwide.

References And Books

Node.JS Help Sheet
“Node.JS is an evented I/O framework for the V8 JavaScript engine. It’s ideal for writing scalable network programs, such as Web servers. We’ve been working on some exciting things with Node.js, and we felt it was only fair to share our knowledge in the form of an easy-to-read Help Sheet.�

The Node Beginner Book
The aim of this document is to get you started with developing applications for Node.js. It teaches you everything you need to know about advanced JavaScript along the way. It goes way beyond your typical “Hello World� tutorial.

Up and Running With Node.js
“Many people use the JavaScript programming languages extensively for programming the interfaces of websites. Node.js allows this popular programming language to be applied in many more contexts, in particular on Web servers. There are several notable features about Node.js that make it worthy of interest.�

Poll: Do You Use Node.js In Your Projects?

How often have you used Node.js in your projects? Have you found some particular tools or articles useful? Share your experience in the comments to this post. Thank you.

Related Posts

You might be interested in the following related posts:

• Learning JavaScript: Essentials And Tutorials, by Smashing Magazine.
• Back-End and Server Administration Guidelines, by Smashing Magazine.

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© Luca Degasperi for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Amazon turned sweet sixteen this year, and, by extension, so did online shopping as we know it. As online shopping has grown over the past 16 years, so have user needs and expectations related to the online shopping experience. Setting up shop online is easy, but creating an experience that satisfies target users is a different story altogether.

In the traditional journey of a purchase, commonly depicted as a funnel, a business loses potential customers as they move closer to the purchasing stage. While this is natural and expected, improving the user experience can reduce this loss by removing unnecessary barriers to shopping online.

Ways to improve the online shopping experience and reduce the drop in the purchase funnel.

The guidelines, techniques and best practices in this two-part series address common user experience issues on e-commerce websites. They are intended as a starting point; books have been written on many of these topics, and a few are recommended at the end. Improving the user experience requires a good understanding of your users and their goals on your website. Use that lens as you read through, to see which of the techniques will improve the online shopping experience for your users.

This first part covers the upper part of the funnel: getting customers to your website and helping them find your products. Part 2 will address the lower part of the funnel: guiding customers through the decision-making process and check-out.

Promote Your Online Presence

Make it easy for customers to find your website by using a combination of online and offline marketing tactics. Analytics will show you how users are coming to your website — for most websites, search engines and other online referrals, including social media, play a big role. What these reports will not show you are missed opportunities, such as customers ending up on your competitors’ websites instead of yours because of their search keywords.

• Analyze your website and the websites of key competitors to compare how you rank on the search terms used by your target users and to identify areas for optimization. Personas, which are representative profiles of target users, can be used as a tool for search marketing efforts, helping you to identify and prioritize keywords, offers and features and to create targeted landing pages. Digital consultancy Roundarch has an example of a keyword persona that it uses when working on search engine optimization (SEO) for Avis.
• If your business is selling in a competitive market, supplement your SEO efforts by buying relevant keywords for paid placement alongside search results, using services like Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.
• Create business profile pages on services such as Google Places, Bing Business Portal and Yahoo Local: these will be highlighted in search results and on location-based social networking services. In addition to your business name, include your physical address, phone number, URL and hours of operation.
• Use email campaigns to attract new customers and draw previous customers back to your website. In a recent Forrester study, retailers ranked email as having the highest return on investment (ROI) among their marketing efforts, including paid search, affiliate marketing and Facebook marketing.
• Create, join or support communities and social networks related to your products or related to issues that your product addresses. An example is Aspirin manufacturer Bayer’s involvement in and sponsorship of the Strong @Heart community on Facebook.
• Go where your customers are; these days, that includes social networks. Companies are experimenting with Facebook ads and check-in coupons, offering promotions on their Facebook walls, and tweeting time-limited deals to their followers. Although companies such as JCPenney and 1-800-Flowers.com have set up Facebook storefronts, their ROI is questionable in value.

  
  JCPenney’s Facebook storefront allows users to shop on the social network.

• Use a short, simple, intuitive and memorable Web address, and secure alternate spellings (walmart and wal-mart) so that users can get to your website even if they misspell your name (jcpenny, jcpenney, jcp).
• Increase visibility in search engine results using SEO techniques, including picking the right keywords and creating keyword-rich and search-friendly page URLs, titles, headings, tags and content. SEO is not a dirty acronym if done the right way. Trying to fool search engines may work for a while, but you will eventually be penalized, as JCPenney and Overstock recently discovered.
• Feature the URL prominently offline: in printed material, while people are on hold on the phone waiting for service or support, in offline advertising and promotion, and in brick-and-mortar stores where appropriate. Quick Response (QR) codes give smartphone users quick access to a website, a sub-section or a particular page without having to type in a long address.

Instill Confidence In Customers

Instill confidence and trust in customers by prominently displaying clear policies, trust certificates, security badges and contact information. Customers are cautious when asked for personal information, and rightly so, with news of hacked websites being so common. Even established brands that customers recognize and trust can use these techniques to reinforce confidence.

• Looks matter, and your website’s design is often the first impression that a customer will get of your business. Creating a professional-looking website is easy and inexpensive, so get the basics right and make a good first impression. This includes designing for accessibility and especially ensuring that your website renders well on mobile devices.
• Highlight security on secure areas of the website to remind customers that their information is safe; even though browsers have small built-in indicators to show secure areas, reiterate it on the page. Amazon does this through its sign-in button; other websites display a padlock icon near the log-in area.
  
  Amazon’s sign-in button reinforces a sense of security.
• Clearly state your business practices (including privacy, security and return policies), and make them accessible from every page. Don’t make users hunt for this information; rather, present these links contextually where appropriate (for example, display a link to your privacy policy near the email-address field).
• Visible contact information instills confidence, even if the customer does not have to use it. Offer contact options and alternatives: even though Amazon does not publicize its customer-service phone number, it makes up for it by offering excellent support via email, chat and call-backs.
• Lesser-known brands should do all of the above, as well as instill confidence by displaying trusted third-party certification and affiliations. These include trust certificates (e.g. TRUSTe), security badges (e.g. VeriSign), accreditation (e.g. BBB) and ratings (e.g. Bizrate).

  
  Instill confidence with trusted third-party certification and affiliations.

Enhance Product Findability

Enable customers to quickly find and discover products by offering robust search and navigation. Customers will not always start on your home page — a search engine or QR code could drop them many levels deep on your website — but good navigation and search should help them find their bearings.

• Create a strong foundation through distinct product categories and user-centric labels that help users explore other areas of the website. Involve users in the design process by conducting exercises such as card-sorting to understand their mental model and to create an architecture that is intuitive to them.
• Mega-menus can be used to expose multiple category levels without making users drill down. See Econsultancy’s article “25 E-Commerce Mega-Menus Dissectedâ€� for more examples. Keep in mind, though, that mega menus aren’t a panacea, they also require profound usability considerations.

  
  OfficeMax’s mega-menus facilitate the scanning of categories.

• Breadcrumb navigation enables customers to identify where they are on your website and helps them backtrack or broaden their search results if needed.
• Keep the search box consistently in the same location across the website. Customers expect it to include a text field, followed by a button labeled “Search,â€� usually in the top right of the screen.
• Accept colloquial synonyms and common misspellings as search keywords, and match results accordingly. On Amazon, a search for “iTouchâ€� brings up the iPod Touch, and a search for “polar bear bookâ€� (as information architects so lovingly call it) brings up Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (which happens to be a great resource that looks closely at many concepts mentioned in this section).
• Help users get faster and more relevant search results. Predictive type-ahead options help users select the appropriate term before running a search. Providing related search terms helps with typos and more common alternatives.
• Display results based on relevance, but give users the options to refine, filter, compare and sort results based on various criteria and to control the number of results displayed at a time.
• Display a summary of key product information in the search results to speed up identification and selection. In addition to the name and image that the user expects, provide pricing, availability, ratings, shipping details and other relevant information.

  
  The search results for “polar bear book� on Amazon, which include: (1) predictive type-ahead; (2) tolerance for synonyms; (3) sorting options; (4) filtering options; (5) summary of key product information (ratings, reviews, formats, pricing, availability).

Stay tuned for the second part, which will focus on guidelines and techniques to help customers make purchasing decisions and to guide them through the check-out process.

Further Reading

• Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, third edition, Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin
• Search Analytics for Your Site: Conversations With Your Customers, Louis Rosenfeld
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites (aka the polar bear book), Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld
• Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?, Susan M. Weinschenk
• How to Create Selling E-Commerce Websites, Smashing Magazine
• Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success, Greg Nudelman
• Selected Usability & User Experience Guidelines, a hand-picked collection of the most useful Smashing Magazine’s articles on Usability and User Experience.

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© Lyndon Cerejo for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

It’s more or less common practice these days to use real HTML lists when what you’re marking up makes logical sense as a list. If you don’t want it to look like a standard ordered or unordered list, that’s easy to fix with a bit of CSS. The underlying semantics will still be there for people using browsers without CSS support or screen readers.

But will it? The short answer is no, not always.

Read full post

Posted in Accessibility, CSS.

Copyright © Roger Johansson

With CSS animation now supported in both Firefox and Webkit browsers, there is no better time to give it a try. Regardless of its technical form, whether traditional, computer-generated 3-D, Flash or CSS, animation always follows the same basic principles. In this article, we will take our first steps with CSS animation and consider the main guidelines for creating animation with CSS. We’ll be working through an example, building up the animation using the principles of traditional animation. Finally, we’ll see some real-world usages.

CSS Animation Properties

Before diving into the details, let’s set up the basic CSS:

Animation is a new CSS property that allows for animation of most HTML elements (such as div, h1 and span) without JavaScript or Flash. At the moment, it’s supported in Webkit browsers, including Safari 4+, Safari for iOS (iOS 2+), Chrome 1+ and, more recently, Firefox 5. Unsupported browsers will simply ignore your animation code, so ensure that your page doesn’t rely on it!

Because the technology is still relatively new, prefixes for the browser vendors are required. So far, the syntax is exactly the same for each browser, with only a prefix change required. In the code examples below, we use the -webkit syntax.

All you need to get some CSS animation happening is to attach an animation to an element in the CSS:

/* This is the animation code. */
@-webkit-keyframes example {
   from { transform: scale(2.0); }
   to   { transform: scale(1.0); }
}

/* This is the element that we apply the animation to. */
div {
   -webkit-animation-name: example;
   -webkit-animation-duration: 1s;
   -webkit-animation-timing-function: ease; /* ease is the default */
   -webkit-animation-delay: 1s;             /* 0 is the default */
   -webkit-animation-iteration-count: 2;    /* 1 is the default */
   -webkit-animation-direction: alternate;  /* normal is the default */
}

First, we have the animation code itself. This can appear anywhere in the CSS, as long as the element that you’re animating can find the relevant animation-name.

When assigning the animation to your element, you can also use the shorthand:

div {
-webkit-animation: example 1s ease 1s 2 alternate;
}

We can cut this down further by not entering all of the values. Without a value specified, the browser will fall back to the default.

Those are the basics. We’ll work through more code in the following section.

Applying Principles of Traditional Animation

Disney — the masters of traditional animation, in my opinion — developed the 12 principles of traditional animation early on and documented them in its famous book The Illusion of Life. These basic principles can be applied to all manner of animation, and you needn’t be an expert in animation to follow along. We’ll be working through an example of CSS animation that uses the 12 principles, turning a basic animation into a more believable illusion.

These may just be bouncing balls, but you can see a world of difference between the two versions.

This example demonstrates the features of CSS animation. In the code below, we use empty divs to show how it works; this isn’t the most semantic way to code, as we all know, but the point is to show how simple it is to bring a page to life in a way that we haven’t been able to do before in the browser.

Squash and Stretch

The crude bouncing ball is a great demonstration of this first point. If the ball falls at a high velocity and hits the floor, you’ll see it squash down from the force and then stretch back out as it bounces up.

At a basic level, this should give our animation a sense of weight and flexibility. If we dropped a bowling ball, we wouldn’t expect it to flex at all — it might just damage the floor.

We can apply this squash and stretch effect through a CSS3 property, transform:

@-webkit-keyframes example {
   0% { -webkit-transform: scaleY(1.0); }
   50% { -webkit-transform: scaleY(1.2); }
   100% { -webkit-transform: scaleY(1.0); }
}

This will scale the object lengthwise (on the y axis, up and down) to 1.2 times the original size, and then revert to the original size.

We’re also using more complex timing for this animation. You can use from and to for basic animations. But you can also specify many actions for your animation using percentages, as shown here.

That covers the squashing. Now we need to move the object using translate. We can combine transforms together:

50% {
-webkit-transform: translateY(-300px) scaleY(1.2);
}

The translate property allows us to manipulate the object without changing any of its base properties (such as position, width or height), which makes it ideal for CSS animation. This particular translate property makes it look like the ball is bouncing off the floor at the mid-point of the animation.

(Please note: to view the sample animations, you’ll need the latest version of Firefox, Chrome or Safari. At the time of writing, Safari provides the best viewing experience of CSS animation.)

• View Squash and Stretch in action.

Yes, it still looks rubbish, but this small adjustment is the first step in making this animation more believable.

Anticipation

Anticipation adds suspense, or a sense of power, before the main action. For example, the bend in your legs before you jump helps viewers anticipate what will come next. In the case of our bouncing ball, simply adding a shadow beforehand suggests that something is falling from above.

• View Anticipation in action.

We’ve added another div for the shadow, so that we can animate it separate from the ball.

To create anticipation here, we keep the ball from dropping into the scene immediately. We do this simply by adjusting the percentage timings so that there is no movement between the start point and the first action.

@-webkit-keyframes example {
   0% { -webkit-transform: translateY(-300px) scaleY(1.2); }
   35% { -webkit-transform: translateY(-300px) scaleY(1.2); } /* Same position as 0% */
   65% { -webkit-transform: translateY(0px) scaleY(1.2); }    /* Starts moving after 35% to this position */
   67% { -webkit-transform: translateY(10px) scaleY(0.8); }
   85% { -webkit-transform: translateY(-100px) scaleY(1.2); }
   100% { -webkit-transform: translateY(0px); }
}

At the 35% point of the animation, the ball is in the same location, positioned off the stage, not moving. Then, between 35% and 65%, it suddenly moves onto the stage, and the rest of the animation follows.

You can also use animation-delay to create anticipation:

div {
-webkit-animation-delay: 1s;
}

However, this could have an undesired effect. The animation-delay property simply ignores any animation code until the specified time. So, if your animation starts in a position different from the element that you are animating, then the object will appear to suddenly jump as soon as the delayed animation starts.

This property works best for looping animations that begin and end in the same location.

Staging

Try to give a stage to the scene; put the animation in context. Thinking back to Disney films, what would they be without the fantastic background artwork? That’s half of the magic!

The stage is also key to focusing attention. Much like on a theater stage, lighting will be cast on the most important area. The stage should add to the illusion. With our bouncing ball, I’ve added a simple background to focus on where the ball will land. Now the viewer knows that the action will take place in the center, and the scene is no longer lost in snow.

Straight-Ahead vs. Pose to Pose

In traditional animation, this is a choice in how to construct your animation. The straight-ahead option is to draw out every frame in the sequence. The pose-to-pose option is to create a few keyframes throughout the sequence, and then fill in the gaps later. Filling in these gaps is known as “in-betweening,� or “tweening,� a familiar term for those used to animating in Flash.

With CSS animation, we typically use the latter, pose to pose. That is, we’ll add keyframes of action, and then the browser will “tween� the intermediate frames automatically. However, we can learn from the straight-ahead technique, too. The browser can do only so many effects; sometimes, you have to do it the hard way and put in more animation hard-graft to get the desired effect.

Follow-Through and Overlapping

Also known as physics! Follow-through and overlapping are more commonly used in character animation for body movement, such as to show arms swaying as the character drops them or long hair falling. Think of someone with a big stomach turning quickly: their body will turn first, and their bulging gut will follow shortly after.

For us, this means getting the physics right when the ball drops. In the demonstrations above, the ball drops unnaturally, as if beyond the control of gravity. We want the ball to drop and then bounce. However, this is better achieved through the next principle.

Slow In and Out

This has to do with speeding up and slowing down. Imagine a car that is speeding along and has to come to a stop. If it were to stop instantly, it wouldn’t be believable. We know that cars take time to slow down, so we would have to animate the car braking and slowly coming to a stop.

This is also relevant to showing the effect of gravity. Imagine a child on a swing. As they approach the highest point, they will slow down. As they come back down and gain speed, their fastest point will be at the bottom of the arc. Then they will rise up on the opposite side, and the action repeats.

Back to our example, by adjusting the in and out speeds, we can make the ball much more believable (finally).

When the ball hits the floor, the impact will make it bounce back up instantly. As it reaches its highest point, it will slow down. Now it looks like the ball is really dropping.

In CSS, we can control this with the animation-timing-function property:

-webkit-animation-timing-function: ease-out;

This property takes the following values:

• ease-inSlow at the beginning, and then speeds up.
• ease-outFast at the beginning, and then slows to a stop.
• ease-in-outStarts slow, speeds up in the middle, and then slows to a stop.
• linearMoves at an even speed from start to finish.

You can also use the bezier-curve function to create your own easing speeds.

• View Slow in and out in action.

Arcs

Similar to the follow-through principle of physics, arcs follow the basic principle of “what goes up must come down.� Arcs are useful in thinking about the trajectory of an object.

Let’s throw the ball in from the left of the stage. A convincing animation would predict the arc along which the ball will fall; and in our example it will have to predict the next arc along which the ball will fall when it bounces.

This animation can be a bit more fiddly to adjust in CSS. We want to animate the ball going up and down and side to side simultaneously. So, we want our ball to move in smoothly from the left, while continuing the bouncing animation that we’ve been working on. Rather than attempt to capture both actions as one animation, we’ll do two separate animations, which is easiest. For this demonstration, we’ll wrap our ball in another div and animate it separately.

The HTML:

<div class="ball-arc">
   <div class="ball"></div>
</div>

And the CSS:

.ball-arc {
-webkit-animation: ball-x 2.5s cubic-bezier(0, 0, 0.35, 1);
}
   /* cubic-bezier here is to adjust the animation-timing speed.
   This example makes the ball take longer to slow down. */

@-webkit-keyframes ball-x {
   0% { -webkit-transform: translateX(-275px); }
   100% { -webkit-transform: translateX(0px); }
}

Here, we have one animation to move the ball sideways (ball-x) and another animation to bounce the ball (ball-y). The only downside to this method is that if you want something really complex, you could end up with a code soup with poor semantics!

• View Arcs in action.

Secondary Action

A secondary action is a subtlety that makes the animation much more real. It addresses the details. For example, if we had someone with long hair walking, the primary action would be the walking, and the secondary action would be the bounce of the hair, or perhaps the ruffling of the clothes in the wind.

In our example, it’s much simpler. By applying more detail to the ball, we make the secondary action the spinning of the ball. This will give the illusion that the ball is being thrown in.

Rather than add another div for this animation, we can be more specific by adding it to the new img element that we’re using to give the ball texture.

.ball img {
-webkit-animation: spin 2.5s;
}

@-webkit-keyframes spin {
   0% { -webkit-transform: rotate(-180deg); }
   100% { -webkit-transform: rotate(360deg); }
}

• View Secondary action in action.

Timing

This is simply the timing of your animation. The better the timing of the animation, the more realistic it will look.

Our ball is a perfect example of this. The current speed is about right for a ball this light. If it were a bowling ball, we would expect it to drop much more quickly. Whereas, if the animation were any slower, then it would look like we were playing tennis in space. The correct timing basically helps your animation look realistic.

You can easily adjust this with the animation-duration property, and you can adjust the individual timings of your animation using percentage values.

Exaggeration

Cartoons are known for exaggeration, or impossible physics. A cartoon character can contort into any shape and still manage to spring back to normal. In most cases, though, exaggeration is used for emphasis, to bring to life an action that would otherwise look flat in animation.

Nevertheless, use exaggeration modestly. Disney had a rule to base its animations on reality but push it slightly further. Imagine a character running into a wall; its body would squash into the wall more than expected, to emphasize the force of impact.

We’re using exaggeration in combination with squash and stretch to make it really obvious when the ball hits the floor. I’ve also added a subtle wobble to the animation. Finally, we also stretch the ball in and out as it bounces up and down to emphasize the speed.

Just as when we added one animation onto another, here we’ll add another div, which will wobble in sync with the ball hitting the floor:

@-webkit-keyframes wobble {

0%, 24%, 54%, 74%, 86%, 96%, 100% {
   -webkit-transform: scaleX(1.0);
/* Make the ball a normal size at these points */
}

25%, 55%, 75% {
   -webkit-transform: scaleX(1.3) scaleY(0.8) translateY(10px);
/* Points hitting the floor: squash effect */
}

30%, 60%, 80% {
   -webkit-transform: scaleX(0.8) scaleY(1.2);
/* Wobble inwards after hitting the floor */
}

75%, 87% {
   -webkit-transform: scaleX(1.2);
/* Subtler squash for the last few bounces */
}

97% -webkit-transform: scaleX(1.1);
/* Even subtler squash for last bounce */
}

}

The code looks more complex than it is. It’s simple trial and error. Keep trying until you get the right effect!

• View principle 10 (exaggeration) in action.

Solid Drawing and Appeal

I have nothing more to teach you… at least not in code. These final two animation principles cannot be shown in code. They are skills you will have to perfect in order to make truly amazing animations.

When Disney started production on Snow White, it had its animators go back to life drawing classes and learn the human form again. This attention to detail is evident in the film, which goes to show that good animation requires solid drawing skills and sound knowledge of the form you are animating.

Most CSS animation will likely not be as complex as intricate figure animations, but the basic principle holds true. Whether a door is opening to reveal content or a “contact us� envelope is being sealed and delivered, the animation should be believable, not robotic… unless you’re animating a machine.

The appeal, or charisma, of each character will be unique. But as Disney has always shown, anything can have character: a teapot, a tree, even spoons. But with CSS, consider how the overall animation will contribute to the design and make the overall experience more satisfying. We don’t want to make clippy animations here.

Go Forth And Animate!

CSS animation is a great new feature. As with every new CSS feature, it will be overused and misused at first. There is even the slight danger that we’ll see a return of those long-winded Flash-style animated splash pages. Although I have faith in the Web community not to do this.

CSS animation can be used to really bring a website to life. While the code for our bouncing ball may not be the most semantic, it hopefully shows how simple it can be to bring almost anything on the page to life with CSS.

It can bring much-needed interaction to your elements (sans Flash!); it can add excitement to the page; and in combination with JavaScript, it can even be an alternative way to animate for games. By taking in the 12 principles above and working away at your animation, you can make your websites more convincing, enticing and exciting, leading to a better experience overall.

CSS Animation Tools

While knowing the CSS itself is great, plenty of tools are popping up that will help you animate. The 12 principles apply regardless, but if you’re worried about the code, these great tools let you try out CSS animation without getting too technical.

• Sencha Animator
• Adobe Edge
• Tumult Hype (Mac only)

CSS Animation in the Wild

Finally, to get you excited about what is possible, here are some great examples of CSS animation being used on live websites:

• CSS Spider-Man animation, by Anthony Calzadilla
• CSS Tricks (animated typography person), by Mircea Piturca
• Walking man, by Andrew Hoyer
• Learning CSS3: Useful References and Guidelines, on Smashing Magazine
• Mastering CSS Principles: A Comprehensive Guide, on Smashing Magazine

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© Tom Waterhouse for Smashing Magazine, 2011.