Bearing in mind that all browsers (in common use) that support border-radius and gradients, also support SVG and canvas, and that SVG and canvas let you do more, are generally more performant, and have fallbacks (SVG particularly) in older browsers, why would you use Donatello?

AFAIK, on iOS CSS (especially when using transforms) is a lot faster because it's hardware accelerated.

Only when using transforms and only when using 3D transforms (though iOS5.0 may support hardware accelerated 2D transforms as well)

You can hardware accelerate 2D transforms on iOS. You just do a -webkit-transform: translateZ(0); and it puts the element in the compositing layer.

Yes, that is a 3D transform.

This looks cool, you might be able to use move.js for the animations:

http://visionmedia.github.com/move.js/

is it possible to have things called pure CSS actually be pure CSS. this is definitely a JavaScript library that uses CSS, nothing more

I have to admit, I was also slightly irritated when I actually checked out the repo. The title is deceptive. "Donatello, a JS drawing library" - which is what it is - would probably not rack up as many points. Interesting tool, I hope to check it out sometime, but the OP should have been a little more honest. Just call it what it is.

Its pure CSS in the same way most pure 'HTML5' demos are

The title inside the main file is a little more honest: "A pure CSS vector drawing library" meaning that the vectors created are CSS only (not Canvas).

It produces CSS. It should probably have HTML+CSS export, then it won't need Javascript.

This whole ninja turtles thing is going to get out of hand. I already know of at least one other Donatello library based on Raphael.js which does something different.

https://github.com/postmodern/donatello

You couldn't have picked a different ninja turtle?

Donatello (the person) was a renowned artist and sculptor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatello

Thanks i'm aware of my Renaissance art, but the things that connected Donatello the artist to Raphael the artist is being italian and a gap of nearly 20 years, in the reverse order you would think, given that there are now two derivative libraries built on Raphael named Donatello.

The ninja turtles connection is, even if you were talking about the artists, the more likely link :P

I personally never even made the turtles connection and assumed that, since they are drawing libraries, they are surely referring to the artists.

Same, but knowtheory's point rings true now that I've stopped to think about it. (That is, the "witty" pop-culture tie-in being the more likely reason as to why two libraries that do similar things to one named after an unrelated artist got named after the same sculptor.)

Erm, the turtles are named after the painters. The other two were called Michelangelo and Leonardo. It isn't a coincidence.

I am aware that the turtles are named after the artists.

If you'll note, even a cursory scan of the artist's wikipedia pages would indicate that Donatello is primarily remembered as a sculptor, and Raphael for his pencil and painted works.

My point is, save for being Renaissance artists, the two have nothing in common, except that they're both Italian, and both had Ninja Turtles named after them.

Your problem with downvotes is yours, if you don't want to risk being downvoted you should probably not comment here. It happens. This 'not being reddit' (or slashdot for that matter) has nothing to do with it.

Downvotes are a way to push non-relevant comments to the bottom of the discussion. And I really believe this ninja turtles stuff is a waste of space, I frankly don't have any desire to see stuff like that on HN.

As for my point, I think enough bits and unique ids have been wasted explaining it, if you wish to hold on to your position that the ninja turtles are the first thing that comes to mind when you hear Donatello that is entirely your problem.

Painters, not ninja turtles.