Will-change finally finds a concrete, reproducible use case
Since will-change shipped in major browsers back in August 2015, developers have been waiting for a clear-cut scenario where the property actually makes a visible difference. Applying it to transform or opacity has always seemed redundant, since browsers already treat those as composited properties with decent animation performance out of the box. The advice from senior devs has been consistent: hold off until you hit a real problem.
Nic Chan has now documented one such problem. In Safari, a hover-transformed pseudo-element can leave behind a small visual artifact — a “dingus of color” — that disappears when will-change is applied. We tested the fix in current Safari builds and confirmed it works.
It’s a narrow win, but a genuine one. What would be more compelling is a straightforward before-and-after demo showing janky motion that smooths out once will-change enters the picture. The likely sweet spot for that kind of improvement is lower-power devices that still have GPUs and are new enough to recognize the property in the first place.
