Thanks for re-sharing it, @magicmark. I hope it’s made clear to Webflow (or whichever committees / approvals / workshops) that “Warning: we run two overlapping, inconsistent, and sometimes conflicting animation systems at once. Here are the limitations:” should be made clear on Webflow’s Documentation.
A list of what Interactions Webflow has and a list of what CSS animations Webflow has would go a long way into users not getting comfortable, “Ah, yup, don’t touch this.”
Example from that very thread: interactions cannot affect text-decoration, but they can affect text color. Huh? This is just one example inconsistency: countless others throughout Webflow. So to have a Normal Day of Developing, you need key information to trust Webflow:
- Webflow’s two interaction systems do not play well together at all. They’re mutually destructive, i.e., a very buggy website with broken elements, broken animations.
- Webflow has only added some CSS animations and Webflow’s Interactions are missing most of the CSS animations. Who has a list? Webflow internally, obviously, but not us. You need to get knee-deep into a project to really understand what’s MIA.
We don’t have that information; Webflow does.
If we want to use a hover animation to 1) add an underline and 2) change the parent div’s background color, you’re forced to combine CSS Hover and Webflow Interactions. But Webflow says you shouldn’t do that.
These “huh, why?” limitations are not detailed anywhere nor given much serious thought (some six years after Interactions launched), and you only realize them once:
- You try to do something using Webflow Support’s patented response “Explore the Interactions panel, play around with it, see what works. This is playground, but only we have the rules. You need to rush in, see what’s broken, and then come back.”
- Webflow’s mish-mash of animations starts conflicting, overlapping, and creating buggy websites. Webflow University feels more marketing than documentation at this point.
- You trawl the forums because Support will take days to answer. You find someone replied months ago, bringing up this exact issue, and we’re all still here.
The only mention of the CSS vs JS division is on the marketing page,
Webflow’s interactions and animations tools bring all the power of CSS and JavaScript into a completely visual tool, empowering designers to build complex, rich animations without even thinking about code.
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About to join the Webinar. How was Webflow this morning? Well, I just hit publish, waited the mandatory “20 seconds, do not click anything”, and tried to open our CMS. How did Webflow react?
Not well. I will say, this is the first time I’ve had this error:
RESULT_CODE_HANG