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Animotion – a visual CSS animation app

poisonborz
11 replies
1d4h

The fact that CSS3 was released in 1999 and such an app in 2023 is a cool HN-worthy post shows how easy, accessible/programmable/inspectable keyframe based animation got stuck with not much relief in sight. Flash dropped dead like a decade ago leaving a void, what remains is its husk as Adobe Animate, and droves of so-so frameworks and communities around them. Robust CSS/SVG based animation remained mostly an empty promise. You can find nice examples, sure, but it remains a niche craft.

rchaud
2 replies
1d

Transitions and Transforms weren't available in 1999. Proper CSS animation with keyframes was first available in 2009 and even then browser support wasn't great -- lots of polyfills like 'moz-' and 'webkit-' were required.

jQueryUI was miles ahead in terms of delivering cross-browser compatible UI animation, so why bother with CSS3 animation which wouldn't work on IE8?

no_wizard
1 replies
22h52m

A modern jQuery UI could go such a long way.

I suppose Bootstrap fits this bill in a lot of ways but I feel like jQuery UI was even easier

rudasn
0 replies
19h57m

Problem with jQuery UI was that it was bloated and came right at a time where bootstrap was taking off, IIRC. jQuery mobile didn't help much either.

The theming support was kind of nice though.

cantSpellSober
1 replies
1d2h

Browser support has come a long way in this time period as well.

Now we have the tech, and the demand, why aren't there more competitors?

rchaud
0 replies
1d

Anybody in the web animation sector likely already has After Effects, which can be made web-ready with the Lottie plugin.

unsupp0rted
0 replies
21h32m

I have no problem with this. Animation on the web improves a page 5% of the time and makes it worse 95% of the time.

I don’t need to see any more Flash “Loading…” screens in my lifetime, especially just to see nav menus.

Even with instant broadband loading, the nav menu is better when it’s not animated. The post-masthead features section is better when it’s not animated.

pcurve
0 replies
1d

I feel like Flash was a technology that served to bridge the gap until faster cheaper internet and video streaming / hosting became mainstream.

These days, the demand is still there, but too niche, with people primarily using mobile device for content consumptions, and plenty of rich media content available in form of videos.

mandmandam
0 replies
1d3h

I squarely blame Adobe for this stagnation, because I remember many people predicting that exactly this would happen when they bought Macromedia. Adobe just kills things, on purpose. Steve Jobs gets a side-order of blame.

So happy I don't give those shits money any more. Thanks Serif!

jokethrowaway
0 replies
22h10m

CSS as an animation spec is simply inferior so we failed to create an open community of people who cared enough about it - and people kept using other solutions

christoph
0 replies
1d2h

Worth mentioning that After Effects can export CSS/SVG/canvas animations with the free bodymovin/Lottie plugin. This is my personal go to for creating web key frame animations and elements.

Not every after effects feature is exportable, but it’s the best and most reliable solution I’ve found for this type of workflow, maybe due in part though to my previous experience with AE.

Currently supported features: http://airbnb.io/lottie/#/supported-features

MyFirstSass
0 replies
1d1h

I've ended up using GSAP in this vacuum for sequencing.

It's a weird heir for all things animation on the web these days, it works great but something about the keyframing/sequencing process seems like it should be supported natively.

darraghmckay
5 replies
1d9h

This is really intuitive, even on mobile surprisingly

merelysounds
4 replies
1d9h

Agreed.

I was able to instantly edit an animation and add a “squishy” feel - by stretching the element at the keyframes, according to its motion; very satisfying.

One thing I couldn’t find is undo/redo. Is it there on mobile (or desktop for that matter)?

ispaghetticode
2 replies
7h6m

Undo/redo have been added

merelysounds
1 replies
2h53m

Thanks for adding this, I find it very useful.

More feedback: I'd like for undo/redo to move me to the keyframe with the change; similar to how a cursor jumps in a text editor during undo/redo. It's a detail though and perhaps you have other features to work on.

ispaghetticode
0 replies
1h26m

That's a great suggestion, thank you. I'll definitely work on implementing it

noman-land
0 replies
1d8h

+100 for undo/redo.

rapnie
2 replies
1d5h
acous
1 replies
19h1m

This is a different Animotion -- a Revealjs wrapper written in Svelte by "Joy of Code" from Youtube.

I guess from the URLs that the Svelte project predates this one:

https://cssanimotion.pages.dev/ https://animotion.pages.dev/

ispaghetticode
0 replies
1h23m
pastage
1 replies
1d7h

Are there any goodways of doing tool tips or hint what icons do on mobile? I do not understand what some icons do, I can test but as is said above no undo!

ispaghetticode
0 replies
7h7m

Undo/redo have been added

zain_saqer
0 replies
1d13h

This is awesome

redgetan
0 replies
1d2h

good stuff. pretty intuitive UI

ramathornn
0 replies
1d13h

Wow amazing work, very cool tool. Thanks for sharing!

noman-land
0 replies
1d8h

This is an amazing tool. Incredibly useful. Thank you.

krebby
0 replies
1d6h

This looks great! I love how intuitive the editor is.

For those who need a bit more advanced timeline, check out Theatre.js. Nice to see more motion on the web platform!

jomoho
0 replies
1d4h

The first thing I wanted to do was to move around keyframes. It seems like that's not yet a feature.

froddd
0 replies
1d8h

That is so good, works excellently even on mobile. I shall bookmark!

darepublic
0 replies
1d9h

nicely done. Glad to see the output is CSS, and not some javascript code tied up in a lib.

cloudking
0 replies
11h34m

This is cool! I've also found GPT-4 is really good at generating complex CSS animations

Narciss
0 replies
18h39m

Love it!