Which is faster, reordering divs or changing xy position of divs?

[rotaercz]

Last question, I promise I won't ask another question for awhile.

 

I'm planning on moving lots of images around and I'm curious which is faster, reordering divs or changing xy position of the divs? I'd like to use the speed of GSAP to animate things around so I wasn't sure which way I should go. What do the gurus out there say? Would really appreciate some input.

[Carl]

Without knowing more about what you are trying to accomplish I would recommend changing the x and y properties.

Our CSSPlugin will intelligently map those values to a 3D transform matrix (depending on browser support) which will in turn lead to super-fast, hardware-accelerated animation.

[rotaercz]

I have a ton of rectangle images. The width and height are all the same. They have different names, colors, etc. The user will be able to sort and filter things based on what they want to see. I'm thinking it would be nice to see the images move around using GSAP as the user sorts.

[GreenSock]

Yep, I'd bet that Carl is correct about x/y being faster because they don't affect document flow and can be hardware accelerated whereas reordering the divs will trigger reflow/layout. I'd always encourage folks to do their own tests though to verify. Let us know what you find in your scenario. 

[rotaercz]

Thank you for the reply!