Here's a great overview and explanation of the new-ish requestAnimationFrame API for javascript. This makes the animations happen in sync and controlled by the browser. This is something that will really help javascript come up to par with animations we are used to and use hardware acceleration. Although it still requires vendor prefixes for all browsers there is a polyfill available to make it happen. I want to see some more demos, (the one linked here in jsfiddle –http://jsfiddle.net/wMkJg/ is more jumpy than my first flash animation 7 years ago).
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requestAnimationFrame — The secret to silky smooth JavaScript animation
Do you often find yourself lying awake at night wondering how you, too, can get your JavaScript animations to be as smooth as those silk sheets of yours? I can’t say for certain that all of us on the CreativeJS team actually have silk sheets, but we did want to show you how to make your animations rock, so we created a page over in our Resources section dedicated to the new(ish) requestAnimationFrame API. Go take a look!