[Tenal]

CSS animations are a pain-inducing non-starter for thousands of recurring use cases.

Example: Using Javascript to SHOW a modal, but then relying applying addClass('animate') using CSS animations to transition that modal (eg: bottom of screen to center, while fading in) are nearly impossible without tons of hackery. The animations do not render.

Hence jQuery animation calls.

[afavour]

What you’ve described is actually pretty simple to do with CSS Animations. Just not with CSS Transitions, which is what people usually use.

[megous]

CSS animations are a necessity if you want any kind of performance on mobile browsers and older phones.

[bredren]

They are. But I still wouldn’t turn to jquery to solve this particular problem.