CSS-Native Parallax Effect

baliex 4 hours ago |

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

jonahx 7 minutes ago | |

Or even linked to one!

dsmurrell 2 hours ago | |

I was also looking for examples.

yashD18 2 hours ago | |

i was waiting for the effect to show up

mpeg 4 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

dandep 2 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.

som 3 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)

iainmerrick 3 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.

phelm 4 hours ago |

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

frereubu 4 hours ago | |

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

frereubu 1 hour 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 1 hour ago | | |

Yes... there's a media query in the codepen disabling animation for people with reduced motion enabled.

werdnapk 3 hours ago | | |

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

anssip 3 hours ago | | |

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

wnevets 2 hours ago | | |

Doesnt work on any browser for me

WithinReason 3 hours ago | | |

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

alpinisme 3 hours ago | | |

FWIW it works on iPhone safari

layer8 2 hours ago | | |

Only on iOS 26.

abejfehr 2 hours ago | | |

I don’t think it did for me. Are you on iOS 26?

Mashimo 3 hours ago | |

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

account42 3 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 3 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.

thomasikzelf 3 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 2 hours ago | |

Android Firefox: there is no background image.

thomasikzelf 2 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.

Semaphor 1 hour 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

mrcsmcln 1 hour 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.

sillyboi 3 hours ago |

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

tantalor 45 minutes ago |

Hey, where's the demo?

albert_e 1 hour ago |

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

rohitsriram 3 hours ago |

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

dandep 2 hours ago | |

Thanks!

duskdozer 3 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.

i_am_a_peasant 2 hours ago |

Idk about anyone here but I find the effect disorienting.

amon_spek 2 hours ago | |

Yes. I'm a little more sensitive than average, but not enough to turn off animations, and this is uncomfortable.

Theodores 1 hour 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.