If you want to grab the attention of your website visitors, what could be better than animation? You can easily make your website elements fade, jump, or swish using many of the app engines available for free on the web. In today's article, we will see how the JavaScript animation library helps achieve all this.
First, a few words about JavaScript animations
It's one thing to add a simple animation that only requires a single action (for example, a toggle). For this, you can always use simple CSS animations. However, for more complex or advanced effects. JavaScript is a better tool. It goes without saying that creating animations using JavaScript is more challenging than using CSS.
However, JavaScript can handle things that CSS cannot. This gives developers more power to control complex animations that require the coordination of multiple moving parts.
JavaScript animation is achieved by adding a gradient to the style of an element. You can add them online as part of your code, or include them in other objects. At render time, these changes are invoked by a timer. In addition, you can control the continuity of the animation by adjusting the time interval of the change.
1. Anime.js
Let’s start this list of JavaScript animation libraries with Anime.js. This lightweight animation library has over 35K stars on GitHub. Working through a powerful API, you can use it to animate , HTML, , CSS, JS, SVG and DOM properties. With a built-in staggering system, it makes creating ripple, directional movement, follow-through and overlap effects simple. This system is available in both timing and properties.
Using the built-in callbacks and control functions, you can do a lot. For example, you can play, pause, control, reverse and trigger events simultaneously.
2. Velocity.js
Velocity.js combines the advantages of jQuery and CSS transformations. It has a rating of nearly 17K stars on GitHub and has prominent users like WhatsApp and Motorola. Mailchimp. Looping, reversing, delaying, hiding/showing elements, attribute math (+, -, *, /) and hardware acceleration are all part of its functionality.
You can use Velocity.js to scroll browser windows. It works both with and without jQuery loaded in the browser, and can even undo previous animation effects.
3. Popmotion
In close proximity to 8K stars, Popmotion is a functional animation library suitable for any JavaScript environment. It works with almost any API that accepts numeric input, such as React, Three.js, A-Frame and PixiJS.
Popmotion weighs only 11.7kB, but it packs a punch. It features animations such as keyframes, decay, timelines for synchronizing multiple instances, and more. You can stagger any series of animations or functions, or use pure functions to compose your own configuration.
4. Three.js
Three.js ranks first on this list of JavaScript animation libraries with over 60K stars. It relies on WebGL to create and render 3D animations in the browser.
has extensive documentation to help you, and once you're past the learning curve, there's nothing you can't accomplish using this library. First, using the Three.js editor, you can create a scene. After this, you can add geometry and adjust lights and cameras. Materials, textures, objects, colors and fog can all be adjusted and the final file can be published to your project.
5. GreenSock JS
GreenSock's GSAP works with a small set of JavaScript files to make animations look good in all major browsers. It smoothly connects multiple animated properties and eliminates browser errors.Actions for
GSAP include creating animations on Canvas, as well as animating any object in the scene. You can also incrementally reveal, transform, or move any object along a path. To do this, it works with a bunch of software applications such as SVGPlugins, PixiPlugin, WebGL, Adobe Animate and EaseJS. Its modular structure helps you choose the features you need. with 8 million users and 10K+ stars With 8 million users and 10K+ stars on GitHub, this powerful library has many advantages.
. AniJS
Among the JavaScript libraries in this list, AniJS is somewhat unique. It allows you to animate elements in a simple "sentence" structure, which is great for people new to animation. What’s more, its non-specific nature allows almost everyone to use it in everyday UX design.
on GitHub, AniJS has over 3.5K stars. It does not rely on any third-party libraries, which often helps speed up development. It works great on both Android and iOS. Android and iOS, also available in all popular browsers.
. Mo.js
Motion graphics play a big role in animation, and Mo.js is an option that can make an impact on you. Beginners may not find it difficult to create geometric shapes and time animations thanks to the large number of tutorials and demos available to help.
These APIs may look simple, but you can do a lot with them. In this toolkit, you'll find a curve editor and timeline editor to help you build your animations, as well as a player to control your animations. There are different modules for interleaving, easing, timelines and more. All of this earns Mo.js a rating of nearly 16K stars.
. Vivus.js
If you want to imitate pen drawing on the screen in real time, you will use Vivus to achieve your goal. It allows you to animate SVG to give the appearance of being drawn. Since it doesn't have any dependencies, it's fast and lightweight.
You can choose any of the available animations - Delayed, Synchronous or OneByOne. Otherwise, you can also create a custom script to draw your SVG. For added flexibility, you can override the animation for each path with a simple JavaScript function. More than 13,000 users gave this library a thumbs up.
. ScrollReveal JS
If you want to animate your web page elements as they scroll into view, ScrollReveal won't let you down. This easy-to-learn animation library has no dependencies and has over 18.5K stars on GitHub.
ScrollReveal supports different types of effects and works well on web and mobile browsers. It intentionally works with a bare configuration, so you can use it as a canvas for your creativity. To maximize the effect of the animation, the creators recommend that you use it sparingly.
0. Typed.js
Typed.js is a simple library (more like a plugin, really) for animating typing on your screen. Once you enter any string , the visitor can see it being typed at a set speed. Not only that, you can also operate the backspace button and start a new sentence. If you want it to be visible to visitors with JS disabled, you just need to place an HTML div on the page. This way, bots and search engines can also view the entered text.
This library has a rating of 9.5K+ stars on GitHub. Powerful users include Slack and Envato.
1. Lottie by AirBnB
Lottie is a lightweight animated graphics format that balances high quality graphics and rendering costs. It makes applications smaller and includes dynamic features.It works on the web, Android, iOS and IoT, and requires no additional software.
Lottie runs on any browser that supports JavaScript. Animations are stored as plain text and are human-readable. Since text data is stored in JSON format, it is easily assimilated by any JavaScript environment. This makes it a popular animated graphics format to enhance mobile front-ends. The Android version alone has nearly 30,000 stars.
