Stop CSS transition from firing on page load

Html Problem Overview

I'm experiencing an issue with the CSS transition property beeing fired on page load.

The problem is that when I apply a color transition to an element, (ex: transition: color .2s) then when the page first loads my elements flashes from black to it's own assigned color.

Supposing I have the following code:

##CSS

p.green {
   color: green;
   transition: color .2s;
   -moz-transition: color .2s;
   -webkit-transition: color .2s;
   -o-transition: color .2s;
}

p.green:hover {
   color: yellow;
}

##HTML

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN'
'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd'>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en">
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
	<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
	<script src="js/main.js"></script>
	<link href="css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
	<p class="green">The Flashing Text</p>
</body>
</html>

On page load, my p.green will fade from black to green.

I don't want to apply the color transition to the :hover pseudo class as that would not apply the transition onMouseLeave.

I'ts really annoying having the text flashing across the webpage. Up to this moment I have been avoiding using transitions unless I really need them and even so I use with care. It would be great if there is some really obvious solution to this that I'm not seeing!

This happens on Google Chrome. I haven't tested in other browsers.

jsfiddle.net/ShyZp/2 (thanks @Shmiddty)

Html Solutions

Solution 1 - Html

There is a bug in Chrome that causes CSS transitions to fire if the page includes a <form> element.

One simple fix is to add a script tag containing a single space to the footer of the page.

<script> </script>

You can follow the bug at https://crbug.com/332189 and https://crbug.com/167083.

Solution 2 - Html

@Shmiddty comments on this question left me thinking, so I have been playing around with the code and found a solution.

The problem lies on the header declarations. By inverting the order of the CSS and JS external file calls - i.e. putting the CSS before the JS - the color transitions stop firing on page load:

<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <link href="css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script src="js/main.js"></script>
</head>

My guess is that the JS load was delaying the load of the CSS to after the DOM was ready. By that time (as @Shmiddty suggested) the text had already been assigned the default browser color and was then using my CSS transition declaration to fade into its styled color.

** I'm still not sure this is the most appropriate way to do it, but it works. If anyone has a better solution please feel free to add or edit.

Solution 3 - Html

Add to your CSS:

.css-transitions-only-after-page-load * {
  -webkit-transition: none !important;
  -moz-transition: none !important;
  -ms-transition: none !important;
  -o-transition: none !important;
  transition: none !important;
}

And add some code to your global JavaScript file:

$(document).ready(function () {
    $(".css-transitions-only-after-page-load").each(function (index, element) {
        setTimeout(function () { $(element).removeClass("css-transitions-only-after-page-load") }, 10);
    });
});

Now you can mark any element on your page with css-transitions-only-after-page-load class:

<div class="container css-transitions-only-after-page-load">
...
</div>

Solution 4 - Html

nienn posts the solution. The problem lies in the document head, and where/how you are loading your stylesheets. It's similar to the "can't modify headers, they're already sent" in PHP, except HTML/CSS/webkit doesn't throw you an error.

I was experiencing this exact problem, read nienn's post, and I reviewed my head. Here were my contents previously.

<html>
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
	<html lang="en">
	<meta name="description" content="A website for me to do whatever I want with." >
	<title>My title</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/mD/media/foot.css">
	<link rel="stylesheet" href="mD/media/head.css" type="text/css">
</head>

Notice I'm not loading any JS, also note of how I was loading the style sheets page after specifying the title. After moving the stylesheet-references to the 'back', it worked like a charm. The end result looked like this:

<html>
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
	<html lang="en">
	<meta name="description" content="A website for me to do whatever I want with." >
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/mD/media/foot.css">
	<link rel="stylesheet" href="mD/media/head.css" type="text/css">
	<title>My title</title>
</head>

It's not only javascript that can cause this problem, but the site title as well. I guess a good rule of thumb is css > js > site title.

Solution 5 - Html

The accepted answer did not do the trick for me. There's a bug in Google Chrome that can be avoided just by adding a script in the page. Even an empty script solves the problem.

Solution 6 - Html

The best way to solve this problem is to use the single space, empty <script> fix found in the answers on this page. However I've found 2 other ways to solve this problem.

Place the CSS of the offending element(s) inside a <style> tag in the header of your HTML file. The bug only occurs when the CSS is called from an external stylesheet.
Place the offending element(s) in a flexbox container. This fixes the bug as well.

Solution 7 - Html

You can just add an empty script tag to your html file.

Like this:

<script type="text/javascript"></script>

but it should include at least one character. Either space or new line (\n) or comment (//) or whatever

<script type="text/javascript"> </script>

<script type="text/javascript">
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">//</script>

Or just link a js file to your html file

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/script.js"></script>

You can place the script tag everywhere you want. In the head or body tag.

This problem only happen during development because at the final situation of a website it will definitely have a js file

Solution 8 - Html

Have you tried using different transition properties? Such as:

-moz-transition: color .2s; /* Firefox 4 */
-webkit-transition: color .2s; /* Safari and Chrome */
-o-transition: color .2s; /* Opera */

Worked just fine for me in Chrome.

EDIT: You answered the question about browsers already. You should try using -webkit-transform

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	nienn	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Html	spencer.sm	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Html	nienn	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Html	Roman Pushkin	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Html	Lando	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Html	Manuszep	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Html	DR01D	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Html	aria T	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Html	Banath	View Answer on Stackoverflow