To harness or exploit the most out of CSS classes is to take advantage of what truly is the unsung hero of advanced RIA development as it relates to the presentation layer. When we observe our markup, we find that various portions of the DOM may require styling influences on the initial page load as well as interaction events or cues to adjust its structure, positioning, visibility, state, and skin. For this classes are the clear suitor, as it brings flexibility, modularity, inheritance, and a dynamic and unobtrusive nature to the table.

It has by far been the most popular thing to come out of this blog since its inception, and I am very proud to officially release version 2, and this time I’ve included all the bells and whistles you’ve been asking for! The framework now boasts support for an impressive amount of transitions, CSS multi-unit support (em, %, ex, and all the rest), and many more optimizations for increased performance to get those smooth animations we all want.

If you have ever wanted to manipulate those brand spanking new styles such as -moz-transform, -webkit-transition, or even some older ones like opacity in IE and max-width in IE6 but didn’t because you were reluctant of browser support, than you are not alone. For this article, I will be exploring some unique tactics in an effort to solve the dilemma as it relates to JavaScript.

Its one of those unnecessary things, but it sure does look pretty, I’m of course talking about animation. Flash or Javascript based, I find it adds that little some extra for the end-user’s experience; allowing them to fully understand the actions taking place by visually seeing components in transition. Most all mainstream libraries support animation in one way or another, and they are all quite impressive, despite the fact the core of each library essentially works the same.