How to Create Better CSS Animations?

We all know that CSS animations are the most advanced addition to any web developer’s tool belt. In most of cases, they are extremely simple yet easy to implement than JavaScript-based animations.

They enable for more complex motion than CSS transitions. For more determined animations, the @keyframe API can be a little missing.

In addition to this, it is quite tricky to take an animation in your mind and convert it into code, even though the animation is a simple one. In order to face these challenges, you can make use of this tool that is known as Style.

When it comes to talking about Stylie, it is an open source graphical web application, which enables users to instantly develop CSS @keyframe animations. This tool can help you to visually construct difficult series in just few minutes that usually take hours to code manually.

Developing the @keyframes API

There are numerous CSS @keyframe animations that are comparatively simple and only contain some of the steps:

@keyframes my-animation {
 0% {
transform: translate(0px, 0px);
 }
100% {
transform: translate(300px, 200px);
 }
}
Moreover, the CSS @keyframe spec enables for any number of keyframes in an animation:
@keyframes my-animation {
 0% {
Transform: translate(0px, 0px);
 }
 10% {
Transform: translate(30px, 15px);
 }
20% {
Transform: translate(60px, 30px);
 }
 /* … */
 100% {
   Transform: translate (300px, 150px);
 }
}

To develop complex yet complicated motion paths, you can take benefit of this fact. The whole path smoothes out and the individual steps become unnoticeable with keyframes. You can easily replicate animation easing curves if these points are accurately spread out between 0% and 100%.

When it comes to typical CSS animations, it delivers a limited set of easing options; however, accurately spacing out keyframes set to animation-timing-function: Make Use of Styliethrough linear you can achieve any curve that you are looking for.

It is the best technique, which enables people to develop just about any kind of animation, which you can dream of. But, trying to achieve this effect by writing @keyframe code for a simple motion will take a lot of hours; therefore, it is advisable not to do this manually.

Make Use of Stylie

Stylie is one such tool that mainly designed to be as simple as possible. You can see an orb animating on a loop between two crosshairs when you first load the application.

Dragging these crosshairs across is easily possible, and the animation will instantly interact with it. You just have to press the + button in the upper right corner of the dark gray control pane in order to add another keyframe. You can also press the K on your keyboard as you can add a lot of keyframes as you like.

The Control Pane

You are capable of dragging it away or press the C key to toggle its visibility if the control pane gets in your way. You can click the ? icon in the page header or you can press the H key in order to see the full online manual for stylie.

Easing Properties

You are also capable of adding curves to individual properties once you get your keyframes where you want them. You can choose a curve name from the dropdown next to each property; however, the preview will update automatically.

You can also add custom easing curves. You just have to select customEasing1 for a property to do this, make sure to open the Motion tab in the control panel and drag across the control points in the Bezier curve preview.

You can also develop numerous custom easing curves as per your desire by just pressing the + button next to the Custom easing dropdown. However, the new custom easing curves will be obtainable to all properties in the Keyframes tab once you develop them.

Well, removing, adding and tweaking keyframes and individual properties makes up the bulk of the stylie workflow. This high-end tool has been optimized for this as impressive animations are the result of the working smartly and tweaking with an idea.

Being a Stylie Power User

To take your animations to completely on a new level, Stylie offers some of the tools and utilities for managing and experimenting with different animation ideas.

Rotation Support

To allow keyframe rotation editing, you just have to hold the shift key on your keyboard when the cursor is not focused on a text input. In the preview area, Yellow cubelets allows every single keyframe crosshairs that you can click and drag across to rotate the corresponding keyframes along with their X and Y axes. Along the Z axis, dragging the narrow Cubelet handles rotates.

Moreover, you can also change the scale of keyframe by scrolling your mouse wheel while the cursor is hovered over a Cubelet.

Keyframe Changing

You can re-enter the values in their respective text fields in the Keyframes tab, if you are looking for finer-grained control over every single property of a keyframe like X/Y, rotation and scale.

Along with the re-typing in the field’s value, you can also press the up or down arrow keys at the time of focused text field to tweak the property.

In case, if you want to stick with the mouse, you just have to scroll your mouse wheel-up or down at the time of hovering over a property field. If you change the text field’s value, the preview will update.

You can easily move whole keyframes across within the animation timelines along with tweaking individual text fields. You just have to click on the ms labels in the keyframes tab and re-enter their value to do this.

Once, you click out of the ms text field or press the enter key, the animation will be updated. In case, if the keyframes reordered as a result of the timing change, they will be moved suitably within the tab.

Saving Animations

As we all know that developing a difficult animation takes times, and it is sure that you won’t lose your work sue to you have navigated away from Stylie.

However, you can save and recall a lot of animations as you need. You can click on the wrench tab in the control panel in order to do this. You can name and easily save your animation for later use.

Unintentionally, if you leave or refresh the page at the time of editing animation, any in-progress work will always saved and reloaded upon your return. However, if you want to begin from scratch, you can click create new animation button in this tab.

The Future Of Stylie

Today, Stylie is a usable and stable; however, this tool is far from complete. Various new features planned that hopefully allow all the sorts of interesting animation possibilities along with making minor changes and improvements to the user experience.

The main aim of this tool to allow anyone to develop any animation, which they can imagine and remain free to use and open source. If you have interest of contributing to the project by searching and fixing bugs or by suggesting or developing in new features, you are motivated to do such.

Stay connected with us to get more information on CSS animation and its related solutions as here we keep updating latest information.