What is Hummingbird and why does it exist? How does this compare to other packages that have some aspect of time/animation management? This page attempts to answer all of that.
Origin / Disclaimer
This is a complete re-write and new take on FrameRate, a sub class of another package which I was the original author prior to it being open-sourced. The entire system has been re-imagined and re-written from the ground up with numerous added features.
Problem
There is no native, universal solution for handling tickers and timers in the browser. This includes the following issues:
- Mixing multiple
requestanimationframe,setTimeout,setIntervalcalls can degrade performance. - There is no native manager when making multiple calls.
- Pausing, resuming, and controlling the iteration speed are not possible without extensive extra code or library.
- Greensock's
TweenMax.tickeris a single static ticker which can set the fps, however it can only be set to one value.
Solution
Hummingbird solves all of these and more! By leveraging a single iterator along with intelligently grouping logic, the number of calls are optimized to give the best possible browser performance, even at high volumes of handlers.