Web Animation That You Can Use in Web Apps

Types of Web App Animation

Many app developers are true fans of creating animations for the web. The best examples of well-designed animations can make your apps significantly appealing. They can establish close connections between users and the content you offer them from the screen.

You can make your web apps more user-friendly, entertaining, and attractive with different types of web animations. If you want to know more about how to create animations for websites and apps and get professional tips on what types of technology to choose from, continue reading this post.

You are sure to like the idea of creating your web application with animation. The first thing to do is to look at the types of UI animations for web apps and learn how they can be used.

Animations for Loading

The main idea of applying animations to your web apps is to brighten up the waiting time while the application is loading. Sometimes, loading videos, maps, PDF files, tables, or website pages takes more time than users expected, so they bounce the site and may never come back to it. If you want to minimize the risks of bouncing, we offer a perfect solution - to create the feeling that the app is running very fast in your customers.

You can apply any type of loading animations that are spinning, jumping, or disappearing. You can also think about short cartoons, shape-changing images, skeleton screens, and progress bars. Your users will be amused and impressed. They will eagerly come back to your site for these bright impressions.

Animations for Welcoming Purposes

If you want to make a positive impression on your website users, greeting animations will serve you well. They will entertain them and engage in using your site and its products again and again. Here are some examples of how to make web animations for welcoming purposes.

3D Animations

Complex visuals with realistic designs can attract more attention. There is a trend of mixing 2D and 3D items in animation-powered web design development nowadays. It produces deeper and more engaging experiences.

Interactive 3D animations are also widely used. They can react to finger movements on mobiles or buttons, mouse, and key clicks. They are also perfect decorative elements placed on the main page to entertain users from the very first minutes on the site.

You may also think about redesigning your website. Adding creative 3D animations will freshen it up and make the interface look stunning.

Particle Animations

Users will feel more relaxed when these animations are on the web app’s homepage. Particle animations can be non-interactive and interactive. The task of interactive pieces is to respond to the cursor’s movements in real-time. Users can be literally hypnotized when they see that they can control the animation on the web page.

Non-interactive animations are also useful because they can be placed in the background, even if a user cannot control them.

The category of particle animations involves typography (or typo) animations. They feature moving letters and can be either interactive or non-interactive, too.

Background Video

The text can be supported by a silent background video that goes quite fast so that users can see it many times. It creates an effect of immersion, and users may decide to spend more time on the page to see its details.

Scrolling Animation Opportunities

If you want to add to users’ control and interactive design of your web app, a proper choice of scrolling animations will help a lot. You can opt for background changes, one-page scrolling, or a scroll drawing. Depending on your app's purpose and design, experienced developers can offer you some other variants. Such additions perform due to the same principle - a user scrolls a page up or down, and the picture moves accordingly.

The Use of Image Galleries

You can tell your users a fascinating story by using multiple images on the same screen in the form of a slideshow or a carousel. This way of creating animations for the web will also help save space on the site. Putting these images in an appropriate order can explain how the web app works, what your business is aimed at, and how the company came to be. Or you can represent your best products and offers to make them more attractive to potential customers. If you set a specific direction for those image carousels or slideshows, your users will be interested in utilizing other elements of the website.

What Is Sidebar Navigation?

It is vertical sliding navigation that helps create an understandable and compact web app interface. These tiny animated icons standing for the menu points will always be visible and easy to reach. Users can access the parts of such a web application with animation without scrolling the page.

Helpful Visual Feedback

These extremely helpful animations aim to show users whether they do everything correctly on the app. There are two types of visual feedback animations - warning and hover effect ones.

Warning Animations

Using these animations is the best solution for telling users that they are performing something incorrectly. For example, asking to repeat an action or avoiding clicking the button once again will help to fill in the field one more time if something has gone wrong or choose another button to complete the action. Professional developers can offer you different shapes of warning animations, like sad emojis, red crosses, or other unique signs, to let users know about their invalid actions.

Hover Effect Animations

The hover effects are used to show users whether the items they want to access are clickable. Such animations are used in the buttons that may show hints, change shapes or colors, or simply light up.

Hover animations are also used to inform customers that their actions were completed successfully. This type can also be used for mobile applications as one of the most effective solutions. Talk to your developer to find the most creative way to apply them in your mobile app.

What About Storytelling?

A good example of a storytelling solution is an animation that represents the creation of a landscape design for your new house’s backyard. Instead of reading a lengthy text, your customer will see the entire process. Such a way of idea presentation is pretty informative, quick, and understandable. Users will absorb all the information you want to convey to them very fast and effectively.

Technologies for Creating Web Animations

If you choose the methods and design for creating animations for the web, you may be interested in the process and how much time it can take. The usual workflow looks the following:

1. You need to ask your web designer to make up the animation concept and let it be available to a front-end developer.

2. When a front-end developer sees the design, it is possible to pick out the technology for its implementation. The developer may choose one of the ready-to-use solutions or think about customization.

3. After the animation is ready, the developer tests its basic uses to understand the points that possibly need improvement.

Here are some of the most popular technologies that provide unique and transparent web animation solutions:

━ CSS animations that are used for transitions with the help of a specific set of keyframes;

━ JavaScript animations that are used to move DOM items on the pages;

━ SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) that use both CSS and their own syntax for a sharper image and better quality;

━ The Canvas, which is utilized for animating a lot of visualizations by working with pixels;

━ Web GL (Web Graphics Library) is usually used for 3D objects and complex effects.

The task that asks to create animations for website pages requires effective cutting-edge tools. Most of such UI instruments are external libraries that you can freely pick out for your specific project.

Let’s consider JavaScript libraries first because theta re pretty helpful, and developers use them most often. We are going to take into account such external sets as:

1. GSAP (Green Sock). This external library provides a lot of options for effective and attractive animations. The main principle of its work is snagging between the starting and ending values about 60 times per second. Such a manipulation allows animating each characteristic separately by scaling, rotating, or moving each element easily. You can animate CSS, SVG, DOM, and other design types with it. The library is very flexible and can be used wherever there is access to JavaScript.

2. Velocity.js. This JAvaScript library is full-featured. Many big companies, such as Uber or SWhatsup, use it for their web pages. It can provide transformations, color animations, SVG support, scrolling, easing, and loops.

3. ScrollMagic. As you can understand from the name, the plugin is used for creating scrolling animations. It can also create pinning elements and add a parallax effect to the page. The plugin can work with different frameworks, but GSAP is usually the most recommended.

4. Vivus. This JavaScript library can provide three animation styles - One-by-One, Sync, and Delayed. The set is used to animate SVGs and create true-to-life images by manipulating different timings and paths.

5. Mo.js. This library works well for animating any web page's UX and UI. It supports the custom motion that is widely sued in present-day graphics. You can use DOM and SVG DOM elements or create unique Mo.js from scratch.

6. Anime.js. This library works with all the CSS features, transforms, and properties, as well as with all DOM and SVG attributes and other elements of JavaScript. It can utilize playback controls, deal with different timings, and ensure easings.

7. Three.js. It is used for 3D animations to facilitate WebGL with its prebuilt components.

Professional designers also know how to make web animations with Adobe After Effects with the help of the BodyMovin extension. They can also add animations to the site with the Lottie library or export them in JSON format.

How to Develop a Code-Free Web Application with Animation

If you have ever seen simple examples of web pages, you need to know that they were created without coding and other sophisticated technologies. You can use website builders even if you are not a web developer. These tools are meant for beginners and help animate some elements on the site. You can research website builders online and choose an appropriate one. Let’s consider several such examples here.

1. Webflow. You can create multi-step animations without coding with it. It helps transform sizes, positions, and styles by tying the motions to scrolling. Elements can also move or change with the help of micro-interactions done in one click or via a hover. There are also prebuilt animations in this program.

2. Readymag. It is a well-known instrument for developing web pages and adding animations to them. You can set the time the animation should start and introduce simple effects such as opacity, scaling, rotating, or just moving. You can also make these effects change in turn. You may opt for this software if you want to make scrolling animations, loading sequences, or click-and-hover moves.

3. Wix. This website builder can help create animations for website pages by making certain buttons or signs interactive. They can slide, float, fade, fold, fly, or turn. You may also add animated page transitions. Let them be fading out in, cross-fade, or slide horizontally or vertically when a user scrolls the page.

Final Thoughts

Now you know how to make web animations for professional and amateur websites to attract users, make them stay on the pages longer, and purchase your products and services.

You can see that there is a great choice of tools, techniques, and technologies to make the development of a web application with animation easier and less time-consuming. Your website will look more modern and unique with them.

You need to be careful not to overload your web pages with all those moving elements because they may slow it down and scare users away.

The best way to implement the tips from this article is to ask professional developers for advice and help. We are ready to meet all your requirements and implement all your interesting and fresh ideas.