The other Labs pages have a sparse twinkling background visible right now behind this text. It's a single SVG with a handful of <circle> elements, each driven by an independent CSS keyframe animation. All the per-frame work happens in the browser's compositor, so CPU cost is effectively zero.
The sliders above drive those parameters. Whatever you set here is saved to localStorage and applied to every other Labs page on this device. The background re-renders live as you drag; the page you're on is the same canvas, so you can preview against real content.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| background | the master switch; the field ships off and animates only on devices where it's enabled here |
| the sliders | density and timing against the fixed layout, previewed live on this page |
| regenerate positions | rolls a new seed when you want a different field |
| reset | restores the defaults, including turning the field back off, but keeps the layout |
One detail worth noting: the dot positions come from a saved seed, not a fresh roll.
- The same field reappears on every refresh and on every other Labs page; you keep whatever layout you've got.
- Dragging a slider previews the change without moving the dots; raising count appends new dots rather than reshuffling.
- Only regenerate positions rolls a new field; reset leaves the layout alone.
This ambient field is the calm cousin of two other Conway experiments on the site: Conway in ambient mode, the live Game of Life running under the page that this settings panel grew out of, and Conway on the GPU, the same simulation packed into a texture and stepped in a shader.
Every Labs page can carry a sparse twinkling dot field: one SVG, a handful of circles on independent CSS keyframes, so the compositor does the per-frame work and CPU cost is effectively zero. This page is the control panel; settings save to localStorage and apply to every Labs page on this device.
- The field ships off; the master switch enables it per device.
- Dot positions come from a saved seed, so the same field survives refreshes; sliders retune density and timing without moving the dots.
- Regenerate rolls a new field; reset restores defaults but keeps the layout.
The page you're on is the same canvas, so you preview against real content.
The calm cousin of Conway in ambient mode and Conway on the GPU.