“First, don’t interfere with user input.”

In response to a previous post, one of the readers wrote this: I would phrase this as the fault of the animation having violated the Hippocratic oath for animations, which is “first, do no harm” a.k.a. “first, don’t interfere with user input”. Yes, one has to be afraid of hyperbole – was there ever an onscreen transition that saved a life? – but there is something I really liked about this phrasing. After all, most transitions and animations are decorators, and every transition and animation is, by definition, also a delay. Here’s Shazam as I open it, and overlaid are my frantic taps as I’m trying to make it start the song recognition process: It’s a cute cold start animation, but: It’s not interruptible, like animations should be. It doesn’t even buffer the taps, so – in case the animation covers for something truly uninterruptible, like loading from the cloud – I can’t simply tap and forget, but instead have to wait and tap after it’s done animating. What’s particularly frustrating…