[HN Gopher] Animotion - a visual CSS animation app
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       Animotion - a visual CSS animation app
        
       Author : marban
       Score  : 339 points
       Date   : 2023-11-24 11:16 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (cssanimotion.pages.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (cssanimotion.pages.dev)
        
       | zain_saqer wrote:
       | This is awesome
        
       | ramathornn wrote:
       | Wow amazing work, very cool tool. Thanks for sharing!
        
       | darraghmckay wrote:
       | This is really intuitive, even on mobile surprisingly
        
         | merelysounds wrote:
         | 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)?
        
           | noman-land wrote:
           | +100 for undo/redo.
        
       | darepublic wrote:
       | nicely done. Glad to see the output is CSS, and not some
       | javascript code tied up in a lib.
        
       | froddd wrote:
       | That is so good, works excellently even on mobile. I shall
       | bookmark!
        
       | noman-land wrote:
       | This is an amazing tool. Incredibly useful. Thank you.
        
       | pastage wrote:
       | 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!
        
       | krebby wrote:
       | 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!
        
       | rapnie wrote:
       | Sources at: https://github.com/animotionjs/animotion
        
         | acous wrote:
         | 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/
        
       | jomoho wrote:
       | The first thing I wanted to do was to move around keyframes. It
       | seems like that's not yet a feature.
        
       | poisonborz wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | mandmandam wrote:
         | 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!
        
         | cantSpellSober wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | Anybody in the web animation sector likely already has After
           | Effects, which can be made web-ready with the Lottie plugin.
        
         | christoph wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
             | 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.
        
         | pcurve wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | jokethrowaway wrote:
         | 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
        
         | unsupp0rted wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | redgetan wrote:
       | good stuff. pretty intuitive UI
        
       | Narciss wrote:
       | Love it!
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-25 23:01 UTC)