14 JavaScript Animation Libraries

Well - designed and smooth animations are one of the most important things that makes an app stand out from the crowd. The purpose of UI animations is to help users understand the product in a more interactive way.

While surfing the web in search of a cool animation library in Javascript, we discovered that many of the "suggested" libraries had not been maintained for a while. For this reason, after some serious research, we have decided to collected 14 of the best libraries to use in your projects.

1. Three.js

This popular library with over 43 K stars is a great way to create 3D animations on the browser by intuitively using WebGL. This library allows us to create rich interactive experiences across devices and browsers by providing < canvas >, < svg >, CSS3D and WebGL renderers. The library was first introduced in April 2010, and nearly 1,000 contributors are still developing it.

2. Anime.js

Anime is a JavaScript animation library with more than 20 K stars that works with CSS properties, individual CSS transformations, SVG or DOM attributes and JavaScript objects. This library allows you to chain several animation properties, synchronize multiple instances, create timelines and more.

3. Mo.js

This library is a motion graphics toolbelt for the web at 14 K stars, with simple declarative APIs, cross-device compatibility and more than 1500 unit tests. You can move or create unique mo.js objects around the DOME or SVG DOME. Although documentation is somewhat scarce, there are many examples and an introduction to CSS tricks.

4. Velocity

Velocity is a fast Javascript animation engine with the same API as the $.animate) (of jQuery at 15 K stars. It features color animation, transformations, loops, loosening, support for SVG and scrolling. Here's a breakdown of the high performance engine of Velocity, and here's an intro to the library's SVG animation.

5. Popmotion

This functional and reactive library of animation weighs only 11 kb at 14 K stars. It allows developers to create animations and interactions from actions that are value streams that can be started and stopped and created using CSS, SVG, React, three.js and any API that accepts a number as an input.

6. Vivus

At more than 10 K stars, Vivus is a JavaScript class with zero - dependencies that allows you to animate SVGs, giving them the appearance of drawing. You can use one of the many animations available or create a custom script to draw SVG. For a live example, check out Vivus - instant.

7. GreenSock JS

GSAP is a library of JavaScript to produce high - performance, zero dependencies, cross - browser animations that claim to be used on more than 4 million websites. GSAP is flexible and uses React, Vue, Angular and Vanilla JS. GSDevtools can also help GSAP - built dubug animations.

8. Scroll Reveal

This library provides easy scroll animations for web and mobile browsers with 15 K stars and zero dependencies to reveal things on scroll in an animated manner. It supports several clean types of effects and can even define animations using natural language.

9. Hover (CSS)

Well, it's a library of CSS. At 20 K stars, Hover offers a collection of CSS3-powered hover effects available in CSS, Sass and LESS for links, buttons, logos, SVG, images and more. The effect you want to use in your own stylesheet or reference the stylesheet can be copied and pasted.

10. Kute.js

A fully functioning native JavaScript animation engine with key cross - browser animation features. The focus is on code quality, flexibility, performance and size (17k min and 5.5k gzipped core engine). The library can also be expanded so that you can add your own functions.

11. Typed.js

This library of 6 K stars basically allows you to create animations for strings at selected speeds. You can also place an HTML div on the page and read from it to allow access for search engines and users with JavaScript disabled.

Also check out: iTyped

12. SVG.js

The lightweight library for manipulating and animating SVG. SVG.js has no dependencies and aims to be as small as possible while providing close to complete coverage of the SVG spec.

13. TweenJS

TweenJS is a simple tweening library for use in JavaScript. It was developed to integrate well with the EaselJS library, but is not dependent on or specific to it. It supports tweening of both numeric object properties & CSS style properties. The API is simple but very powerful, making it easy to create complex tweens by chaining commands.A simple but powerful JavaScript library for tweening and animating HTML5 and JavaScript properties. Works stand-alone or integrated with EaselJS.

14. Ant Motion

Ant Motion is a motion design specification from Ant Design, and also provide a complete solution with lots of out-of-box animations for your React applications.

What can Ant Motion do?

• Create neat animations by using React components with a simple configuration.
• Create beautiful landing page with motions by a few steps.

Before diving into these libraries, don't forget about using pure CSS!

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Janeth Kent

Licenciada en Bellas Artes y programadora por pasión. Cuando tengo un rato retoco fotos, edito vídeos y diseño cosas. El resto del tiempo escribo en MA-NO WEB DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT.