Web animations: What are they, and why do you need them?

And what's one of the stimuli that we cannot escape? Movement. It's written in our DNA. When we catch something moving quickly out of the corner of our eye, the brain alerts us in a split second. We react instinctively because movement can mean danger and, in other times and places, not paying attention can prove fatal.

So if a static picture is worth a thousand words, how much would an animation be worth? This is what we'll try to understand in this article. We'll discuss web animations in particular, and we'll try to answer the following questions:

As we've already mentioned, many different types of animations fall under the umbrella term "web animation", from the simplest to the most complex ones. Let's take a look at some of the most common and widely-used animations.

It's a classic. You hover your mouse pointer over a button, and you notice that it lights up or changes colors, shape, or it does something different. And then, after you click, the button changes its appearance, so it is clear you have just clicked it.

Animations like these are beneficial to the user because they provide visual feedback, making clickable elements easily recognizable, helping to understand its function and indicating whether the actions performed were successful or not. They're so useful that they've become a standard element of a good web interface.

We hate waiting, but sometimes we need to wait for a page or an individual piece of content to load. Two tricks are necessary. You can do everything you can to make this wait time as short as possible, or you can provide one of those loading animations that spins, skips or disappears for loading.

We now know what kinds of web animations we can use, and we also know how to employ them to attract and engage users, offering them a rich and satisfying user experience. Only one question still needs to be answered: How do you create a web animation?

In reality, the solutions for creating web animations are diverse. In the beginning, to liven up some otherwise static pages, there were only GIFs. Then the Flash boom occurred, which led to the "baroque" period of web design, with so many (too many!) animated elements crowding everyone's screens.

Today, having decreed that Flash has become obsolete, we have solutions like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and SVG that allow ample opportunities for expression and interactivity in addition to ensuring compatibility on all major devices and browsers.

So, when it comes to creating web animations, do you need to be a professional developer or, at any rate, know how to work with coding and libraries?

No, with the proper tools, anyone can create great looking animations to enrich the pages of their website.

With website creation software such as WebSite X5, for example, many of the animations related to micro-interactions, page scrolling and display effects are already provided for and managed by the tool itself. Let's consider the case of a button. In setting it up, the program gives you all the customization options for you to define its appearance, behavior and effects in all its various states.

Basically, when building your pages in WebSite X5, you're also defining the animations, and eventually you'll have a website that's capable of providing a great user experience for the visitors.

However, if your purpose is to create an animated banner, an interactive infographic, a small game or a 2D/3D animation, you'll need a tool such as WebAnimator, now available in  its Version 4.  

With WebAnimator, you have a canvas on which you can place all the elements you need, a timeline for managing keyframes along with numerous panels in which the many functions and properties you manage are clearly and intuitively organized.

You can work visually by taking advantage of the powerful drawing and animation tools, as well as numerous preset effects which allow you to speed up your work even more. And, at the end, you can export your animation to HTML5 to publish it on the Web or to some of the more popular video formats to give everyone a demonstration of what you've created.

WebAnimator also offers an editor for adding code, which is perfect for more expert users.

At the end of the day, web animations may not be the solution to every problem, but they certainly can help you on many occasions, such as giving feedback, entertaining and garnering attention, etc. We've seen that, when used properly, they can be fantastic tools that aren't even that difficult to create, even if you're inexperienced.

Now, what are you waiting for? Discover all you can do with a tool like WebAnimator, and boost your imagination!