How They Fit Together: Transform, Translate, Rotate, Scale, and Offset

Firefox 72 was first out of the gate with “independent transforms.” That is, instead of having to combine transforms together, like:

.el {
  transform: translate(10px, 10px) scale(0.95) rotate(10deg);
}

…we can do:

.el {
  rotate: 10deg;
  scale: 0.95;
  translate: 10px 10px;
}

That’s extremely useful, as having to repeat other transforms when you change a single one, lest remove them, is tedious and prone to error.

But there is some nuance to know about here, and Dan Wilson digs in.

Little things to know:

Independent transforms happen first. The transform property happens last and stacks on top of what has already been done, which can get confusing¹.
They all share the same transform-origin.
The offset-* properties also effectively moves/rotates elements. Those happen after independent transforms and before transform.

Claus Colloseus wrote in to fix some issues in this post and clarify just how confusing this can be. For example, rotate: 45deg; transform: rotate(-45deg); will do nothing as both of them will apply and effectively cancel each other out. So shouldn’t translate: 50px 0; rotate: 45deg; transform: translate(-50px, 0) rotate(-45deg); also all cancel out? No, because of the ordering, the end result is like translate(14.6447px, -35.3553px).

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