- Orbs rise from below the bottom edge to above the top edge, each with
its own 36-68s pass (slower on phones), a negative delay (scene already
populated on load), own horizontal position, a gentle sway and a slight
scale drift; opacity fades in/out at the edges so the loop never pops.
- Only transform + opacity animate, each orb on its own composited layer
(will-change: transform); no filter/backdrop-filter, nothing animates
size/offsets/shadow. The glacier blobs are untouched.
- Opacity lowered ~38% in both themes: 0.55->0.34 light, 0.8->0.5 dark,
phone overrides 0.32->0.2 / 0.42->0.26.
- prefers-reduced-motion: rise removed, orbs return to the old static
placements (a paused-from-start CSS animation is not applied in Chrome
and would park them below the fold); tab hidden: a visibility listener
parks the whole scene (.ice-paused), blob drift included.
- Measured with a CDP perf trace on a 4x throttled phone profile: p95
33.4ms, 0 frames over 34ms, no long tasks - identical to the pre-change
baseline; ~0.6% extra main-thread CPU. Desktop stays compositor-bound
from the pre-existing blob drift, as before. tests/bubble-perf.mjs
keeps it repeatable.
- New bubbles suite (34 checks) in the repo harness; the axe contrast
matrix is now 16 runs (360/390/1280 x dark/light x EN/CS) and passes.
- SW cache -> freezmo-v31; README decision 46.
Full suite: 11/11 suites, 424 checks.
Rebuilds the look around the spec: an ice scene, one shared glass
recipe, icy accents and glass on every large surface. Visual only —
layout, behaviour, copy and functionality are untouched.
Background
- .ice-scene: fixed, z-index -1, pointer-events none. Navy base
(#070b16 to #0c1426) in dark, pale (#f4f9ff to #e6f1fb) in light,
four drifting glacier blobs (#38bdf8/#60a5fa/#818cf8, 30-60s
transform-only loops), five glossy ice orbs (40-220px radial
gradients with a highlight at 30% 25% and a blue shadow) placed so the
glass blurs them, and an SVG feTurbulence grain at 4-5%.
- prefers-reduced-motion stops the drift; phones get two blobs and two
orbs fewer.
Glass
- One shared recipe (.glass-panel, .card, .sidebar-surface,
.study-chrome, .tabbar, .glass, .gate-card): rgba(255,255,255,.06)
dark / .55 light, blur(24px) saturate(140%) (16px on phones), a bright
1px rim, an inset top highlight and a blue-tinted outer shadow.
- Nested glass (chips, inputs, secondary buttons) is more opaque and
never adds a second blur layer. @supports fallback for no
backdrop-filter. Radii: 24-28px cards/sheets, 14px inputs/buttons,
pills for chips. Cards hover brighter + cyan rim + 2px lift, 180ms.
Colour and type
- Accent is glacier cyan (#38bdf8) to ice blue (#0ea5e9); progress bars
and selected states use the gradient; the active sidebar item is a
frosted highlight with a cyan rim.
- Primary CTA: icy gradient — white to #bfe3ff with ink text in dark,
deep blue in light (biased so the label sits on the darker half and
keeps 5.6:1).
- Leftover slate/black greys replaced with navy-tinted frost tokens.
- Headings are semibold with tighter tracking.
Screens
- Dashboard: the sidebar is one tall inset rounded glass panel; deck
cards are glass.
- Gate: one centred glass card over the scene, orbs visible behind it.
- Sheets/modals: glass over the dimmed, lightly blurred backdrop.
- Study view: question card more opaque (.glass-solid); top bar and
pager are slim glass pills.
Perf: measured on a phone viewport with 4x CPU throttling. The animated
blobs' filter: blur() was the whole cost (150ms vs 33ms per frame), so
they are soft radial gradients with no filter now; idle 60fps, ~17ms
median while scrolling.
Tests updated for the new tokens: contrast 18/18 AA, deck chrome 15/15,
key gate 49/49, install sheet 64/64, deck fixes 15/15, retry 14/14,
zoom 6/6, final ux 12/12, security 8/8, pwa 16/16.
