The definition of animation and the web context

Animation, by definition, is the process of creating a continuous motion over a period of time. The World Wide Web started with static HTML pages, and then .gifs and JavaScript animations started to appear. There were nonstandard <blink> and <marquee> HTML tags too, which were very annoying and limited. These were supported only by very old browsers and are currently deprecated.

Since technologies improved and the Internet bandwidth increased, animations have been a big deal on web browsers across the years. Developers started using Adobe Flash™, Java applets, Microsoft Silverlight, and other third-party solutions that lacked interoperability. Until recently, it was hard to rely 100 percent on a solution. This problem led to the creation of standards such as CSS3 Transition and CSS3 keyframe animations.

Check out http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-animations/ and http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-transitions/ for W3C's working drafts.

Another key improvement to animations on web browsers is the evolution of JavaScript engines and layout engines. Together, these improvements created an environment that enabled us to animate our web applications with cross-devices and the interoperability safety of operating systems. Standardization is the solution.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript have been used to create web applications, and recently, they have even been used to create native apps for iOS, Android, and other devices with solutions such as PhoneGap.

Check out http://phonegap.com for more information on creating apps using web technologies.

Microsoft adopted this stack (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) as an option in order to create native apps for Windows 8 as well. This is evidence that CSS3 and ECMAScript will evolve faster and in partnership with big companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

Currently, all major web browsers are evergreen, which means that they automatically update themselves without asking the user to accept them; they update themselves silently. This is a new era for web development. Old browsers that used poor JavaScript engines and lacked support for CSS3 are dying.