Improve Tabs indicator animation and related utils

[DaniGuardiola]

What?

This PR simplifies the utils used in animating the indicator, which is also the base for the upcoming ToggleGroupControl animation which is done but will be submitted in a follow-up.

Additionally, it switches to a transform-based strategy, which should speed up the animation even further.

This work is also related to the useResizeObserver refactoring efforts (#64820). Here, the utility is radically simplified (and renamed to useResizeObserver) with the goal of unifying with that separate effort in a separate PR.

Why?

We had to make some compromises to prevent overflow due to the previous method of measuring positions of elements relative to their offset parent, which resulted in a sub-0.5px error margin (see #61979). This updated approach has exact precision which eliminates some critical issues in the upcoming ToggleGroupControl animation work.

I made a playground to illustrate this: https://stackblitz.com/edit/solidjs-templates-grt7kw?file=src%2FApp.tsx

The switch to transform provides better animation performance.

The refactor of useResizeObserver aims for upcoming unification in relation to #64820.

How?

See diff, it's all extensively documented.

Testing Instructions

Try the tabs indicator animation in the Storybook, plus a few Tabs instances in Gutenberg for good measure (there's a complete list of instances and where to find them in the description of #64371 if that's useful).

Testing Instructions for Keyboard

Interact with tabs through keyboard.

Screenshots or screencast

n/a (just check the storybook, there are no appreciable changes other than the improved subpixel precision)

[github-actions]

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Co-authored-by: DaniGuardiola <daniguardiola@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: ciampo <mciampini@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: t-hamano <wildworks@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: tyxla <tyxla@git.wordpress.org>

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[ciampo]

Loving the cleanup!

In my tests, the indicator is not showing when switching the writing direction to RTL. We need to RTL-proof some settings, I guess

[DaniGuardiola]

@ciampo thanks for the review! Do you know if the RTL issue is pre-existing? Because if so, this can be merged and that can be treated as a separate bug. Though I can't really think of a reason RTL would break things, must be missing something 🤔

[github-actions]

Flaky tests detected in 522d816.
Some tests passed with failed attempts. The failures may not be related to this commit but are still reported for visibility. See the documentation for more information.

🔍 Workflow run URL: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/actions/runs/10814115022
📝 Reported issues:

• [Flaky Test] Navigates the items list via UP/DOWN arrow keys #64334 in /test/e2e/specs/site-editor/dataviews-list-layout-keyboard.spec.js

[ciampo]

Trunk looks fine to me, so it seems like something introduced by this PR.

I haven't looked deeply into it, but here's where I'd look:

• the first suspect that I see is the transform-origin ?
• in general, we need to flip anything that is explicitly or implicitly anchored to the left and scaling to the right
• when the tabs don't "fill" the whole tablist width, that may affect the positioning of the indicator in RTL screen? Maybe we could consider changing from display: flex to display: inline-flex ?

[ciampo]

Update: we should look at @t-hamano 's proposed fixes in #64965 as an inspiration for what tweaks to make to support the animation for RTL writing directions

[t-hamano]

Curiously, the visual width of the indicator seems to change depending on the display and browser zoom. Is transform-origin or transform: scaleX() affecting it? I can't see this issue in trunk.

✅ Display scale: 100%

❌ Display scale: 125%

❌ Display scale: 100%, Browser zoom: 150%

This issue occurs in Chrome but not in Firefox.

I'm testing on Windows OS, can you reproduce this issue on MacOS?

[tyxla]

I'm testing on Windows OS, can you reproduce this issue on MacOS?

Good find @t-hamano 👍 Can reproduce in the latest Chrome on MacOS:

Can't reproduce in trunk:

[DaniGuardiola]

Just added RTL support. Thanks @ciampo and @t-hamano for detecting the issue and @t-hamano for attempting a fix, although now obsolete due to the change to the transform strategy. Your PR will be helpful to me in the follow-up I'm working on for the ToggleGroupControl, since that one will need to use the previous positioning-based strategy, so thank you!

Regarding indicator size, I cannot reproduce in any browser, including Chrome in Mac OS. Can y'all double-check that you're in latest? Either way, it seems like a bug to me that's probably just been fixed so I think we'll be fine.

[DaniGuardiola]

Do y'all think this is changelog-worthy? I'm not really sure since it's a minor internal detail.

[t-hamano]

@DaniGuardiola

Regarding indicator size, I cannot reproduce in any browser, including Chrome in Mac OS.

Can you reproduce the issue by changing the zoom level of the Chrome browser? My Chrome version is 128.0.6613.114, but I can reproduce the issue by changing the browser zoom level to something other than 100%.

[ciampo]

I think it needs a CHANGELOG entry under the "Bug fixes" section since it implicitly fixes the RTL bug flagged by @t-hamano

[ciampo]

Let me try to nuke my local env, rebuild everything, install fresh WP, and test again.

[ciampo]

Tested again on a fresh install — I can still reproduce on latest Chrome (version 128.0.6613.114), Firefox and Safari MacOs 🤷

@WordPress/gutenberg-components am I the only one?

[t-hamano]

The latest commit hash for this PR is 4db2b35, is the issue occurring as of this commit?

[ciampo]

Yup, that's the commit.

Are you both testing changes on Windows, or is @DaniGuardiola testing on MacOS? Just trying to find what could be the difference.

Kapture.2024-09-02.at.18.28.38.mp4

[DaniGuardiola]

@ciampo tested in Mac.

[t-hamano]

Can you reproduce this issue in Playground? If you enter the PR number, we all should be able to test it in the same environment.

https://playground.wordpress.net/gutenberg.html

6097f088b7e903af4008fec1bd1b314d.mp4

[DaniGuardiola]

Tested on Windows now using the playground, still can't repro.

[ciampo]

I can 🤷

Kapture.2024-09-02.at.21.28.33.mp4

[ciampo]

I also tested on latest chrome on MacOS Sequoia via browserstack (free trial), and still managed to repro 🤷

[DaniGuardiola]

HOW

[tyxla]

Very easy to repro with the latest Chrome in macOS:

Screen.Recording.2024-09-02.at.22.59.38.mov

[DaniGuardiola]

AH! Needed to set a gradient, I was missing that. I'm onto something now...

[t-hamano]

I looked into the cause of the problem and found that when the Tabs component is rendered in the Popover component, rect.width and rect.height becomes zero here.

This may lead to some CSS variables becoming NaN as a result.

Perhaps the problem is related to the animation. If I enable prefers-reduced-motion to disable the popover animation, the issue does not occur. Is there any way to solve this issue..?

1db84e28328a320bd6fa05b63f9ebe06.mp4

[DaniGuardiola]

I've updated the PR with two details:

• Synced the useResizeObserver hook with the latest version from Add useEvent and revamped useResizeObserver to @wordpress/compose #64943, as the ultimate goal is to remove it from here and use it from @wordpress/compose.
• Added a system to useTrackElementOffsetRect for resilience to an edge case (like the one we're running into with the background color popover) by attempting to measure again after a frame, and if that fails, polling until it succeeds. Thanks @ciampo for pairing with me to look into this, and @t-hamano for helping out as well.

If you look at the popover now, you'll see that it's properly sized. In this case, the first fallback (requestAnimationFrame) succeeds. Polling is really just a last resort fallback, in case there's a similar case where there's also an animation delay. It should be really rare, if it ever happens at all, but at least we can rest assured it will never break the indicator. It also should not be too heavy on the CPU, 10 measurements per second seems like a good way to balance performance with speed so that there's no significant flashes or delays for the user.

[DaniGuardiola]

Update: I have now removed the duplicated utility since #64943 has been merged.

[ciampo]

LGTM 🚀

Changes tested well on my machine, both in Storybook and in the editor, LTR and RTL, horizontal and vertical, automatic or manual tab activation, in sidebars and in popovers.

Left a couple of minor comments, but they're not blocking.

Also, this needs an updated CHANGELOG entry (likely under "internal", since Tabs is still private)