AliceJS is a micro JavaScript library focused on using hardware-accelerated capabilities (in particular CSS3 features) in modern browsers for generating high-quality, high-end visual effects.AliceJS is completely self-contained and doesn’t rely on any other libraries. It also focuses exclusively on setting up animations through CSS manipulations. This makes it easy to include along with other libraries without fear of collision as AliceJS doesn’t try to do event handling (touch or mouse), nor does it enforce particular logic or layout elements. It’s easy for instance to use AliceJS to animate a Dojo Dialog component for example, or a jQuery UI component, just by addressing the underlying DIV.
We are experimenting with many UI components, with tying in sensors, adding physics, and even organics. This is perhaps one of the more exciting feature of AliceJS. The human eye is very good at spotting differences in movement. Something so subtle as a millisecond difference can be perceived. Achieving natural/organic randomness is at the heart of most high-end visual effects in Hollywood blockbuster films. The beauty is that we don’t need to reach that level of sophistication to give an effect some variability so that during the lifetime of the application, things don’t feel repetitive. Varying just slightly the speed, perspective, and over-rotation on a flip effect adds a degree of subtle “freshness” every time it comes up.
