parallax scrolling issue - div element jerking when scrolling in webkit browsers

Question

I have created a parallax scroll, which seem to be working fine in firefox however in the chrome browser there's a slight jump on the body text when scrolling. click here scroll to the about section. I am not sure if t this is a css or JS issue.. below is a snippet i have incorporated into my parallax function

Does anyone know how i an fix this issue?

$(document).ready(function(){

// Cache the Window object
$window = $(window);

// Cache the Y offset and the speed of each sprite
$('[data-type]').each(function() {  
    $(this).data('offsetY', parseInt($(this).attr('data-offsetY')));
    $(this).data('Xposition', $(this).attr('data-Xposition'));
    $(this).data('speed', $(this).attr('data-speed'));
});

// For each element that has a data-type attribute
$('[data-type="background"]').each(function(){


    // Store some variables based on where we are
    var $self = $(this),
        offsetCoords = $self.offset(),
        topOffset = offsetCoords.top;


    // When the window is scrolled...
    $(window).scroll(function() {

        // If this section is in view
        if ( ($window.scrollTop() + $window.height()) > (topOffset) &&
             ( (topOffset + $self.height()) > $window.scrollTop() ) ) {

            // Scroll the background at var speed
            // the yPos is a negative value because we're scrolling it UP!                              
            var yPos = -($window.scrollTop() / $self.data('speed')); 

            // If this element has a Y offset then add it on
            if ($self.data('offsetY')) {
                yPos += $self.data('offsetY');
            }

            // Put together our final background position
            var coords = '50% '+ yPos + 'px';

            // Move the background
            $self.css({ backgroundPosition: coords });

           $('[data-type="scroll-text"]', $self).each(function() {
                    var $text= $(this);
                     var pos = ($window.scrollTop()/10) * $text.data('speed');
                     var curP = $text.css('margin-top'); 
                     var is_chrome = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('chrome') > -1;
                     if(is_chrome) {
                         $text.animate({
                         paddingTop: pos,
                        }, 200, 'linear', function() {
                            // Animation complete.
                        });
                     } else {
                     $text.css('padding-top', pos);
                     }
            }); 

        }; // in view

    }); // window scroll

}); // each data-type


      }); // document ready

Answer 1

Some suggestions:

1.) Use position: fixed to avoid any jitter, as you'll be taking the element out of the document flow. You can then position it using z-index.

2.) Cache as much as you can to ease processing time.

3.) Math.round may not be necessary, but try adding this CSS to your moving areas: -webkit-transform: translate3d(0,0,0); This will force hardware acceleration in Chrome, which may ease some of the jittering. (It looked smoother on my screen when I added this with Inspector, but it didn't get rid of the jumpiness with the scroll wheel.) Note: Don't do this on your entire document (e.g. body tag), as it might cause some issues with your current layout. (Your navigation bar didn't stick to the top of the window, for instance.)

4.) If you have any animations running as part of your parallax logic (tweening the margin into place or something along those lines), remove it - that would probably cause the jump you see.

Hope this helps. Best of luck.

Answer 2

I see the same jittering in FireFox and Chrome (Mac). Looking at your containers, one thing that's glaring at me is the pixel position that's being calculated/used.

Chrome: <div id="about-title" style="margin-top: 1562.3999999999999px;">
FireFox: <div id="about-title" style="margin-top: 1562.4px;">

Browsers aren't going to allow content to sit at 1/2 pixel, let alone 0.3999999 of a pixel. I think it's moving it, and trying to calculate whether to round up or round down. It jitters because it's calculating with every click of your mouse wheel.

Thus, I'd try adding Math.round() to your positions so that the containers are never being left in limbo.

Take a look at the code here: http://webdesigntutsplus.s3.amazonaws.com/tuts/338_parallax/src/index.html

Firebug some of the elements, and you'll see that their only fraction of a pixel is '0.5'. Most of them (the bulk) go to round number values.