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No.295 · Text Animations

Split-Flap

A departures board that changes its mind the old way: every character is a real two-leaf cell that flips through the drum in order to reach its new letter, the light leaving each falling leaf, landing with a small bounce. Changes ripple across the board, and only the characters that change move.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Amber

Build a Solari split-flap board that cycles through "boards" (arrays of rows), e.g. airport departures: "WY 903 SALALAH 14:05" → "…GATE A4" → "…BOARDING". Cells: one per character, padded to the longest row. Each cell is two static halves (top shows the next letter's top half, bottom the current letter's bottom half) plus a leaf hinged at the middle (transform-origin bottom, preserve-3d) with a front face (the old letter's top half) and a back face rotated 180° on X (the new letter's bottom half), both backface-hidden. A half is an overflow:hidden box 50% tall containing the glyph in a 200%-tall centred span (offset by −100% for bottom halves). A 1px dark hinge line with two small pins crosses the middle. Flipping: the drum order is " ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789:.-/". To change letter a cell flips through every letter between, one leaf at a time with the Web Animations API: rotateX 0 → −180° in 64ms; the final leaf takes 230ms and bounces (−180 at 62%, −166 at 80%, −180). The falling face darkens (a registered --shade number animated 0 → .55 as an inset shadow) and the arriving face lightens. Cells start staggered by column (26ms) and row (70ms) plus up to 40ms of randomness, so changes ripple; cells whose letter doesn't change never move. One rAF scheduler advances cells; after the board settles it holds 3.2s and moves to the next. Size: the board is a container (container-type: inline-size) and cell width = (100cqw − gaps) / columns, height 1.5×, font 1.08× width, so 24 columns fit a phone. Header with a title, subtitle and a Pause button (it loops; WCAG 2.2.2). The board is aria-hidden; the current rows are in a visually hidden list. Pauses offscreen and when the tab is hidden. Reduced motion changes letters in place with no flaps. Selected variant — Amber: theme="amber": amber letters (#ffb53d) on black cells (#262628 / #1a1a1c) on a #0d0d0e board, with a faint glow — the classic departures board; page #070708.

Notes

Interaction
Watch the board update; Pause holds it.
Motion
Leaves 64ms each, last leaf 230ms with a bounce; staggered 26ms per column and 70ms per row; hold 3.2s between boards.
Accessibility
The flap grid is aria-hidden; the current board is a visually hidden list (not live, so it doesn't chatter). A Pause button stops the cycle. Reduced motion swaps letters without flipping.
Responsive
Cells are sized from the board's own width with container units, so all 24 columns fit from phone to desktop.
On touch
Not pointer-driven; identical on touch.

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301 components