This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.
The Animation
.playState
property of the Web Animations API returns and sets an enumerated value describing the playback state of an animation.
This property is read-only for CSS Animations and Transitions.
Syntax
var currentPlayState = Animation.playState; Animation.playState = newState;
Value
idle
- The current time of the animation is unresolved and there are no pending tasks.
running
- The animation is running.
paused
- The animation was suspended and the
Animation.currentTime
property is not updating. finished
- The animation has reached one of its boundaries and the
Animation.currentTime
property is not updating.
Previously, Web Animations defined a pending
value to indicate that some asynchronous operation such as initiating playback was yet to complete. This is now indicated by the separate Animation.pending
property.
Example
In the Growing/Shrinking Alice Game example, players can get an ending with Alice crying into a pool of tears. In the game, for performance reasons, the tears should only be animating when they're visible. So they must be paused as soon as they are animated like so:
// Setting up the tear animations tears.forEach(function(el) { el.animate( tearsFalling, { delay: getRandomMsRange(-1000, 1000), // randomized for each tear duration: getRandomMsRange(2000, 6000), // randomized for each tear iterations: Infinity, easing: 'cubic-bezier(0.6, 0.04, 0.98, 0.335)' }); el.pause(); }); // Play the tears falling when the ending needs to be shown. tears.forEach(function(el) { el.play(); }); // Reset the crying tears animations and pause them. tears.forEach(function(el) { el.pause(); el.currentTime = 0; });
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
Web Animations The definition of 'playState' in that specification. |
Working Draft | Initial definition. |
Browser compatibility
Feature | Chrome | Firefox (Gecko) | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari (WebKit) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | 39 [1] | 48 (48)[2] | No support | 26 [1] | No support |
Feature | Android Webview | Chrome for Android | Firefox Mobile (Gecko) | IE Mobile | Opera Mobile | Safari Mobile |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | 39 [1] | 39 [1] | 48.0 (48)[2] | No support | 26 [1] | No support |
[1] Before Chrome 50/Opera 37, this property returned idle
for an animation that had not yet started. Starting with Chrome 50/Opera 37, it shows paused
.
[2] Prior to Firefox 59, this property returned pending
for Animations with incomplete asynchronous operations but as of Firefox 59 this is indicated by the separate Animation.pending
property. This reflects recent changes to the specification.
See also
- Web Animations API
Animation
for other methods and properties you can use to control web page animation.