14_JavaScript_Libraries_For_creating_Stunning_Animations_785

The term ‘Animation’ often leads us to think about cartoons and animated films. But, today, this is not the case because now animation has found a myriad of applications in various fields. For instance, animation is widely used in the film-making industry to generate motion graphics and various other 3D visual effects.

Similarly, animation in web designing involves applying various transition and transform effects to the two-dimensional visual elements on the user interfaces. The overall result is that the website looks livelier as the visual objects appear to be moving. Basically, the whole science of animation revolves around the law of physics, based on which, the attributes like motion, spin, rotation, gravity and others are used for implementing the various animation effects. Animation makes a website more interactive by offering visitors several visual cues which improves the overall browsing experience. It simplifies website navigation and keeps the users informed about the kind of tasks that they perform or are supposed to perform.  So, animation is used in call-to-action buttons, highlighting fields in online forms or in a shopping cart on an E-commerce website.

Today, incorporating the principles of animation in web designing has become very important as it makes the user experience more intuitive and engaging. As a developer, it is important to apply animation effects to the various parts of a website prudently. There are a lot of web technologies which can be employed for using animation in web designing. But, none of them are as powerful as JavaScript. We all know that JavaScript is a popular front-end technology for designing interactive user interfaces of websites and web applications. JavaScript programming is very simple to learn. There are several online tutorials to learn JavaScript and jQuery.

Considering its resourcefulness, a range of JavaScript animation libraries have sprung up which allows developers to animate the various elements on a websites with ease. Gone are the days, when flash-based animation was a prevalent trend. Today, JavaScript is the hottest trend in the technology sector and it has surpassed Flash in terms of popularity and usage.

So, if you want to include animation-based UI features in your next web designing project, then you should definitely give JavaScript a shot. There are several JavaScript animation libraries which can aid developers in achieving the desired results. Intuitive features and animation effects like hover effects, modal windows, progress bars, scrolling effects, page load animation and others can be brought about by using the right JavaScript library.
So, here I am presenting you with a list of 14 such JavaScript libraries which will make animation designing a breeze. Alright, so let us check out the 14 JavaScript libraries to create stunning animations.

1. Dynamics.js

DYNAMIC
Dynamics.js is a great JavaScript library for designing Physics-based animations. The library allows animating CSS and SVG properties of any DOM element, I.E. JavaScript object or a range of other elements. Dynamics.js is used for designing interactive menu bars, syncing spinners, loaders, buttons and more. The library offers various animation types as well as options for customization, such as frequency, bounciness, rotation, friction, duration and more.

2. Cta.js

cta
Cta.js is a light-weight library for animating elements on a web page for creating ‘Action-to-Effect’ paths. It can be used for navigation in a tile-based application, opening modal windows or sidebars on button clicks and more.

3. Beep.js

beep
Beep.js is a JavaScript library for creating web-based synthesizers using the WebAudio API. It can be used in creating music or designing music-based learning tutorials.

4. Rainyday.js

rainday
Rainyday.js is a robust JavaScript library which uses an HTML5 canvas for creating a beautiful animated effect of raindrops falling on a glass surface. It has an extendable API to integrate custom implementations of various animation components.

5. Iconate.js

iconate
Iconate.js is a great resource for designing icon transformation using trendy animations. It has a plethora of options to offer and integrates with Font Awesome, Glyphicons and custom icon sets.

6. Dom-Animator.js

doomanimator
Dom-Animator.js is a JavaScript library for showing ASCII animations within comment nodes inside a DOM.

7. Famous

famous
Famous is a powerful JavaScript library for designing modern animations. Its event-based system updates transforms easily, thus rendering smooth animation and transition effects. Famous also features a 3D physics engine for creating custom animations and animated simulations. You can include various types of physical bodies, such as point particles and 3D boxes as well as bind different attributes (forces and constraints) to objects like gravity, drag and collision.

Also See: 10 Platforms for Creating Animations

8. Bounce.js

bounce
Bounce.js is a robust JavaScript library for creating cool animations powered by CSS3. You can design various animated and motion effects, such as spin, rotate, to and fro motion, swoosh effect and more.

9. Snabbt.js

snabbit
Snabbt.js is a lightweight JavaScript animation library using CSS3 transform matrices. It is a minimalistic library which allows applying various transition and motion effects, such as scaling, resizing, skewing, rotating and more.  Snabbt.js also supports attention animation which is useful in form validation.

10. Rekapi

rekapi
Rekapi is an advanced JavaScript library used for CSS key frame animation as well as DOM animation with JavaScript. Rekapi is popular for its usefulness in designing complex animations. You can use Rekapi for creating animated pie charts and graphs, confetti, interactive timelines and user interfaces.

11. Shifty

shifty
Shifty is a JavaScript library which is completely extensible and flexible. It is a full-fledged tweening engine for designing a myriad of animation effects. Shifty is a low-level library which is usually integrated with a high-level animation library or platform. Shifty is used for tweening numeric objects, colour shifting, designing bouncing blocks and more.

12. Tween.js

tween
Tween.js is a JavaScript tweening library. It is used for tweening both numeric and non-numeric objects as well as for tweening and animating, HTML, JavaScript and CSS properties.  Tween.js is used for applying various animation effects, such as easing and delay effects as well as for sequencing multiple tweens.

13. Velocity.js

velocity
Velocity.js is an advanced JavaScript animation library with a plethora of features. You can choose from a variety of commands and options, such as looping, delaying, easing, reversing, queueing and more. Moreover, Velocity.js offers modern animation features like slides, scaling, rotation, color animation and SVG element animation.

14. Move.js

move
Move.js is a minimalistic JavaScript library which allows designing CSS3-powered animation extremely simple. You can use Move.js for applying a gamut of animation effects, such as skewing, rotating, scaling, moving, easing and more.

Conclusion:
JavaScript infuses animation features in user interfaces, websites, web applications and games. It breathes life in to static websites and user interfaces, thus enhancing the visual element of a website and also improving the overall user experience. Animation in web designing has a broad scope for improvement and only time will decide the future trend of web designing and the role of animation in it. It will all depend upon the development of more technologically advanced tools. But, one thing is sure that JavaScript is here to stay for a long time and will continue to evolve, gradually providing better functionality to add new dimensions to front-end development. If you want to mention some more names of JavaScript animation libraries or give any feedback, then you can write your thoughts in the comments section below. Thank you.