[css-transitions] What should happen on transitionend when transition ended but the listener is not called yet?

[saschanaz]

Currently Firefox implementation and Chrome/Edge one for transitionend has slight difference.

See this sample:

h2 {
  transition-duration: 4s;
}

/** Resolves when event fires on target element */
function tillEvent(element, eventName) {
  return new Promise(resolve => {
    element.addEventListener(eventName, ev => resolve(ev), { once: true });
  })
}

const track = [
  [400, 200, 0.5],
  [300, 300, 0],
  [200, 400, 0.5],
  [0, 0, 1]
];

button.addEventListener("click", async () => {
  for (const [x, y, opacity] of track) {
    text.style.marginLeft = `${x}px`;
    text.style.marginTop = `${y}px`;
    text.style.opacity = '' + opacity;
    await tillEvent(text, "transitionend");
  }
});

This sample:

1. applies three properties including marginLeft, marginTop, and opacity,
2. then waits until the transitionend event occurs,
3. and then applies next property set (that includes marginLeft, marginTop, opacity).

The intended behavior is that each property set is applied after each transitionend event.

Firefox runs this sample as intended; it applies the properties and waits transitionend on each loop. The element goes 400,200->300,300->200,400->0,0 where each movement takes 4 seconds.

Chrome and Edge does differently: The element goes 400,200->immediately 0,0. I think the event listeners on the second/third loop are immediately fired as the browser still have other two transitionend on their event queue after the first loop.

What is the expected behavior here?

[birtles]

My guess here is that Edge and Chrome run these event handlers synchronously instead of batching them. CSS Transitions 2 makes it more obvious that they should be batched, but even then it's not entirely clear.

I think we need to tidy up HTML's processing model so that the step that refers to running CSS and dispatching events actual includes sending CSS animation events, CSS transition events, and Web Animations' animation playback events. (See whatwg/html#707). These events should ideally be batched and sorted.

[birtles]

I went through this with @dstockwell from Blink and we think that Chrome and Edge are probably correct here and the Firefox behavior arises due to a bug in Firefox's Promise/microtask handling.

[birtles]

The bug in Firefox's Promise/microtask handling has been fixed since Firefox 60 and the test case now behaves the same in Firefox as in Chrome/Edge.