Skip to content
Performance

Quick tip: will-change is not free

Promote layers on purpose, not by habit.

Motion adds a lot to isometric scenes, and it is also the fastest way to make someone feel unwell. Wrap every animation in a prefers-reduced-motion query. For readers who ask for less motion we keep the scene still and use a small colour change on hover instead, which keeps the interface responsive without any movement.

Save time

Keep a copy of the finished scene in your snippets. Most new illustrations start as a small change to an old one.

Share

Written by

Inês Duarte

Inês is Cubefold's colour and type lead. She believes every isometric scene needs exactly one warm accent, and not two.

All 16 posts by Inês Duarte

8 comments

  1. Gus Lindgren

    Works nicely in Firefox. Safari needed the prefixed transform-style for us.

    Reply to Gus Lindgren
  2. Bea Kowalski

    Short and useful. More quick tips like this, please.

    Reply to Bea Kowalski
    1. Nina Ahlberg

      Thanks! A follow-up is already in the drafts.

      Reply to Nina Ahlberg
  3. Lena Vogel

    I teach an intro CSS class and I am going to use this as the final project.

    Reply to Lena Vogel
  4. Hana Sato

    The part about layer counts was eye-opening. Our landing page had over a hundred.

    Reply to Hana Sato
  5. Eli Novak

    Is there a way to do the shadow without a pseudo-element? Our CMS strips empty spans.

    Reply to Eli Novak
    1. Inês DuarteAuthor

      Fixed now, thanks for spotting it.

      Reply to Inês Duarte
  6. Omar Haddad

    Thanks for covering reduced motion. It is so often an afterthought.

    Reply to Omar Haddad

Leave a comment

Your email address won’t be published. Required fields are marked.