Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images that create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion created by the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be achieved in several ways, the most common being as a motion picture or video.

Animation has been about since before the web began, enhancing visual content and, in many cases, animation is used to highlight the interface. Today, animation is not just part of a websites content, it’s a fundamental feature, essential to increasing interaction with the site.

Since CSS3 was rolled out across most major browsers and devices, we have witnessed an important evolution of animation techniques. In addition to endless libraries for JavaScript-driven animations, the panorama before us is truly spectacular; technologies for animated content are branching out across the web thanks to Canvas, SVG, CSS3, WebGL… The latest giant step is the unification of declarative and imperative animations via web animation APIs to merge features from SVG and CSS.

External Links: W3C Web Animations | Animation Courses | 12 Basic Principles of Animation | The Illusion of Life