Fancy Input - CSS3 text typing effects for input fields

http://dropthebit.com/demos/fancy_input/fancyInput.html

by robin_reala • 13 years ago

194 71 13 years ago

dropthebit.com

eknkc• 13 years ago

Works great on Chrome, causes weird flashes on Safari.

ErikHuisman• 13 years ago

* { -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-transform: translate3d(0,0,0); }

Eliminates the flashing completely. It introduces some weird safari behavior so only include it if you know what you're doing.

nevir• 13 years ago

This is a bad idea - forcing every DOM node to become a hardware accelerated layer is going to introduce a huge amount of memory overhead (webkit doesn't release composited layers when they scroll off screen, in many cases)

A better approach is to apply -webkit-transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0) to only those nodes that will animate.

Your mobile viewers, especially, will be glad that your page doesn't kill the browser (when it goes OOM)

nadinengland• 13 years ago

I'm getting the weird flashes on Chrome (25.0.1364.99) OS X 8.2 :/

ebbv• 13 years ago

I had a ghost "a" at the end of my text that I couldn't get rid of in Safari. Also it just ran slowly. Ran flawlessly in Chrome, though.

jacobbijani• 13 years ago

I got the "a" also from trying to do cmd+a to select all.

dmvaldman• 13 years ago

Really nice! Some things are broken on my iPhone, like the spacing when deleting and typing letters when they overflow the input area

woodpanel• 13 years ago

I think it's beautiful too. Typing funcionality somewhat breaks if I start to use the "del" key to delete some text.

pknight• 13 years ago

Very cool effects but pretty jittery and laggy when typing fast on chrome 24, too bad.

8ig8• 13 years ago

Cool, but please don't use this. It is essentially unusable on my iPad. Virtual keyboards tend to choke on such fanciness. If you want my input, make it easier, not harder for me.

nwh• 13 years ago

I concur. It explodes on my iPhone and makes the autocorrection unusable.

muxxa• 13 years ago

Bug report: I managed to get it into a state where it's impossible to delete the characters behind the cursor. I remember pressing the Euro sign (alt-gr + 4) and accidentally hitting the 'Windows' key. Here's a dump of the DOM state: http://pastebin.com/ELyMNAKd

GhotiFish• 13 years ago

Easy to replicate. Start typing when the field does it's premable. Things go to hell quickly from there.

UnoriginalGuy• 13 years ago

Dumb Q: How did you dump the DOM state like that?

bvdbijl• 13 years ago

In chrome you can right-click on any element in the developer tools to select "copy as HTML" which copies the DOM as it currently is to your clipboard

oatmealsnap2• 13 years ago

I got the same by hitting "CMD + A" for "Select All".

jenius• 13 years ago

+1 for the DOM dump - never seen this before but great way to report a front-end error

gsg• 13 years ago

I ran into a similar bug fiddling with home and end.

Repro:

Delete the intro text, type 'wat'. Hit 'home'. Hit 'delete' three times. Observe breakage.

skoob• 13 years ago

Dead keys seem to confuse it, though. They get added to the value of the input element, but they aren't displayed.

jonny_eh• 13 years ago

What's a dead key?

quarterto• 13 years ago

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dead+key

sebbean2• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key

slightly more constructive response

jofo25• 13 years ago

I like this! It has potential to be used in really nice ways. Once the kinks have been worked out, I would definitely consider using this.

eisbaw2• 13 years ago

What Intel giveth, CSS and javascript taketh away...

SchizoDuckie2• 13 years ago

Please use this never on mobile. The experience is impossible on android, and as seen from the rest of the comments on iOS it's not much better...

On desktop it's super cool though. Kudo's!

ante_annum2• 13 years ago

> Please use this never

You could have ended your sentence there.

SchizoDuckie2• 13 years ago

I can see how it can add funkyness to games, plus the fact that it's possible is awesome. But, "With great power comes great responsibility"

networked• 13 years ago

I disagree. This is exactly the kind of thing creates juiciness [1][2] in games. Just don't put it in my tax forms.

[1] https://emshort.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/make-it-juicy/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg <-- I'd recommend anyone who cares about making and/or understanding games to watch this talk.

pornel• 13 years ago

It's not super on desktop either.

I guess it makes the silly assumption that pressing keys types letters — which is not true with CJK text input (IMEs).

wmeredith2• 13 years ago

As an interaction designer, I implore you: do NOT screw around with forms. Your conversion rates will fall through the floor. The CSS specification itself says that browsers can ignore styling for forms. This is by design. Overriding it with a bunch of unsupported animated nonsense that requires Javascript and invisible divs and such is a recipe for disaster from a usability and accessibility stand point.

dmix• 13 years ago

You don't fill out paper forms with fancy markers, you use black or blue pens. There's a reason for that.

aegiso• 13 years ago

Yes, and the reason is primarily socio-historical. It does not necessarily follow that it's better.

oneplusone• 13 years ago

If somebody were doing a browser-based game there is absolutely a place for this. Sure, general apps should not do this, but I wouldn't say you should never do this.

That said, the performance on this is too poor to use as is.

epidemian• 13 years ago

> That said, the performance on this is too poor to use as is.

Really? I found it to be super responsive (Firefox on Linux).

But yeah, i agree, for things like games this would be really cool.

tomkin• 13 years ago

I always find that I agree and disagree with these kinds of comments. From an accessibility and standards point of view, I absolutely agree – don't fuck with what people understand. From a progressive, artistic point of view I think these kinds of implementations allow for some creative expression. In the end, all industries have the artsy take on what is possible, but not necessarily ideal.

wmeredith2• 13 years ago

As with most things, it's all about balance. Is the atmosphere of your web form worth losing 10% of its conversions?

If you're designing MYST for the web browser; probably. If some small percentage of luddites can't get past your fancy character creation screen, then the game is (likely) not for them. Their frustration is worth it for the total immersion for the ones that can. There are a number of environments in which a cohesive experience trumps the drawbacks of a fiddly interface. But if someone is wanting to convert sales of a B2B accounting application, or needs to create batch data entry forms for said application, then things need to be weighed differently.

Being a good designer isn't about knowing how to recreate [software from the 90s] in Javascript or CSS3. It's about making lots of little decisions like this all the time.

gatorek• 13 years ago

Tried it on Chrome. Non-english characters look awful - fonts are mess, typing effects work randomly. Sometimes all I'm typing is invisible. For me it's unusable.

oatmealsnap2• 13 years ago

Looks great! A few bugs, and probably many usability and compatibility issues, but I can see something like this finding its way into a movie or game website. Too flashy for a regular form input, but in the right context it would feel at home.

JoshTriplett• 13 years ago

Ugh. When I select text, the selected text does not appear in the same location as the corresponding unselected text, the cursor doesn't line up with the selected text, and the cursor moves to incorrect locations in the text as I move it with shift-arrows.

JacobIrwin2• 13 years ago

I'm not an advanced user of jQuery, but still feel slightly ashamed for asking:

How can I use effect2 without having to change/toggle the class (i.e. effect2 class onPageLoad)??

JacobIrwin2• 13 years ago

Tried changing [0] to [1] in this line: $('section :input').val('').fancyInput()[0].focus();

...still not working...

sebbean2• 13 years ago

broke it within 10 seconds

andrewguenther• 13 years ago

Cute, but if I were a user and I saw a form that uses this, I would probably close the tab.

jokull• 13 years ago

Stops working if you type an accent character ´

evv• 13 years ago

This is cool, just don't press tab.

tallowen• 13 years ago

The number of bug reports in my opinion sums up the problem with doing this thing. Even though these effects can be really neat, there is nothing worse than somebody trying to put in data and have the form not accept thier input for an unknown reason.

That being said, I think these could be really neat in certain places and maybe with a bit more testing this could be super useful.

shocks• 13 years ago

Clicking the input box when it's typing "type something..." is causing a crash for me. Also, I broke it by hitting home and then spamming the left arrow key. :)

Chrome 27.0.1423.0 dev-m

momchenr• 13 years ago

Gives me a headache.

mmuro• 13 years ago

File this under "One of those things that can be done but never should be."

suyash• 13 years ago

It creates a lot of extra DOM nodes, not that great to be honest for this effect.

josh_blum• 13 years ago

typing more than 5 letters made be feel i was going to have a seizure.

also, the demo is lacking in basic usuability-- at least have the form reselected automatically when you change between effects.

Bjuukia• 13 years ago

Pretty. But whenever I see something like this on a website, I disable styles. As easy as Ctrl-Alt-Z on my browser.

I do it for blogs that have fancy title css, scripted comments... just about for anything that's unnessesary junk and therefore just a pretty annoyance.

adamzegelin• 13 years ago

Please do not use this.

The whole page flashes and flickers for me on Safari 6.0.2 on Mac OS X 10.8.2.

Input of extended characters also doesn't work. Option-[aeiou] doesn't enter any characters. Holding [aeiou] prints the base character but fails to update once a modifier is selected.

The antialising algorithm alternates between subpixel and greyscale, causing flickering changes to the boldness of the text.

All in all, very very broken.

frogpelt• 13 years ago

If I select 'textarea' it only wraps by letter not by complete word.

I thought someone might want to know.

gbog• 13 years ago

So many paternalistic comments here telling us to please not use this. As if it was not obvious enough this fancy input is properly useless, and very interesting in its uselessness, as an experiment or an exercice de style.

Usefulness is overrated. Would no human ever had followed the craze of useless endeavors, we would still all be living in caves, and would not even draw with fingers on theirs walls.

davekinkead2• 13 years ago

Bug: ctrl-a (or ctrl-anything) results in the non-ctlr key stuck in the text field with no way to delete it

davekinkead2• 13 years ago

Should also say - OSX10.7 + FF19

bluehex• 13 years ago

FYI: Switching to an IME to enter Japanese (or any other language, I imagine) breaks it and doesn't allow typing. Switching back to English doesn't fix it. Putting the cursor at the beginning again allowed me to type English, but I can no longer type at the end.

fuleo• 13 years ago

Not working on IE9

meerita• 13 years ago

Aside the dizzy collateral effects you get after writing more than 10 words, when you try to write accented words in other languages it stops working.

With measure, and applying it wisely, this can be a good thing. But for long texts, it's a madness.

jpasden• 13 years ago

I immediately tried to input Chinese, and it stopped working.

yojimbo311• 13 years ago

It's certainly "fancy", but... as someone who has been forced to go down this road more than a few times for desktop and mobile platforms please do NOT encourage this. The level of manipulation and monitoring of key events necessary to get even close to parity of normal input behavior and accessibility, which this example unfortunately doesn't do very well, is enough to drive one into voluntary retirement.

It's fun to look at and play with, and I know it has some useful applications, but it quickly becomes incredibly fragile and is guaranteed to waste time and effort that can, and should, be spent on other stuff. Unless of course there is nothing left to do and you're just looking for ways to torture some poor soul hopped up on Red Bull or Mountain Dew.

That said, I definitely do encourage anyone interested to explore how this stuff works. My experience has been that design pretty much overlooks input behavior in general, but there are some pretty impressive things that can be done now without painting yourself into a corner and exploring stuff like this is probably one of the fastest ways to figure out where the boundaries are.

eisbaw2• 13 years ago

I never had reasons for animosity against CSS, but now I do.

Fancy Input - CSS3 text typing effects for input fields

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