CSS animation-fill-mode

By  on  

We're always super excited to get into CSS animations because, quite frankly, they're incredibly awesome.  One overlooked animation property, however, is the animation-fill-mode property.  This CSS property sets the state of the end animation when the animation is not running.  Here's a quick example:

@keyframes fadeIn{
	0% { opacity: 0 }
	100% { opacity: 1 }
}

.fadeIn {
	animation-name: fadeIn;
	animation-duration: 1s;
	animation-fill-mode: forwards;
}

In the case of my fadeIn animation, I want the element to stay at an opacity of 1 when the animation is complete.  If I don't set the value to forwards, the element would go back to an opacity of 0 after the animation runs.  In most cases, you'll likely want the the value of animation-fill-mode to be forwards, so don't forget to add it!

Recent Features

  • By
    Being a Dev Dad

    I get asked loads of questions every day but I'm always surprised that they're rarely questions about code or even tech -- many of the questions I get are more about non-dev stuff like what my office is like, what software I use, and oftentimes...

  • By
    CSS @supports

    Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS.  What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix.  Yuck.  Another thing we...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Form Element AJAX Spinner Attachment Using MooTools

    Many times you'll see a form dynamically change available values based on the value of a form field. For example, a "State" field will change based on which Country a user selects. What annoys me about these forms is that they'll often do an...

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

Discussion

  1. MaxArt

    Indeed, animation-fill-mode defaults to “none”, which means no animation style is applied when the animation starts or ends. You could expect “forwards” to be the default one, but… nope.

    The other values are “backwards” and “both”. Cue to MDN page:
    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/animation-fill-mode

  2. tomByrer

    > You could expect “forwards” to be the default one, but… nope.

    This is why Max: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-animations/

    > The keyframes specify the behavior of one cycle of the animation… If a 0% or “from” keyframe is not specified, then the user agent constructs a 0% keyframe using the computed values of the properties being animated. If a 100% or “to” keyframe is not specified, then the user agent constructs a 100% keyframe using the computed values of the properties being animated.
    > …by default an animation does not affect property values after the animation ends. The ‘animation-fill-mode’ property can override this behavior.

    So, it is assumed that the non-animated state is the ‘default’ resting state for the animation.

  3. This definitely helped me out a few times. I also like the “animation-direction” property, it can lead to interesting effects: http://cdpn.io/Kdslg

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!