06-31-2025

Yesterday, while scrolling through Awwwards, I found myself reflecting on how far web design has come. Today, creating modern, interactive front-ends is easier than ever. Back when tools like GSAP didn’t exist, adding animations meant building everything from scratch—most sites avoided them altogether or stuck to basic effects. Now, we’re seeing mind-blowing, fully 3D experiences, like Engine’s website, that push the limits of creativity.

That’s what inspired me to write this article. When I first started my development journey, I wish I’d had a guide like this—something to point me toward the best tools for adding motion and life to a website. Whether you’re a developer, designer, or a business owner looking to make your site stand out, you’ll find something here to help. While a bit of JavaScript knowledge will be useful, most of these tools are approachable for beginners. So, with the background out of the way, let’s dive into my favorite animation tools.

GSAP

My personal favorite when creating a vanilla js website is GSAP. GSAP (GreenSock Animation Platform) is a JavaScript library for creating high-performance animations. It provides a suite of tools for animating HTML and SVG elements, including tweening and timeline animation. GSAP is widely used in web development for creating complex and smooth animations and is known for its reliability, speed, and ease of use. It works across all modern browsers and supports a wide range of features and plugins, making it a popular choice for developers looking to add dynamic animations to their web projects.

Framer Motion

If you are working with a react library then you should be using framer motion. Framer Motion is a React-based animation library for creating animations and interactions for web applications. It provides a simple, declarative API for creating animations and transitions, making it easy for developers to add dynamic effects to their applications. Framer Motion is built on top of the animation library, GSAP (GreenSock Animation Platform), and uses the React framework to provide seamless integration with other React components. It is designed to be performant and flexible, allowing developers to create complex animations with ease. It is also highly customizable, making it a popular choice for web developers looking to add dynamic and engaging animations to their applications.

Rive

Rive is also a great library to use. Rive is new to the scene but has made waves in the design community in recent months. Rive is a vector-based animation platform for creating interactive animations and animations for games, apps, and the web. It provides a visual authoring environment that allows designers and developers to create animations using a library of customizable components, without the need for code. Rive animations can be exported as code or as a runtime library, making it easy to integrate animations into a variety of platforms and environments. It supports a wide range of features, including physics-based animations, particle effects, and dynamic animations, and is designed to be fast and efficient, making it a popular choice for creating engaging and interactive animations.

Three JS

Three.js is a JavaScript library for creating 3D graphics and animations for the web. It provides an easy-to-use API for creating and manipulating 3D objects, scenes, and animations, and is built on top of WebGL, a low-level graphics API for the web. Three.js makes it possible to create complex and interactive 3D graphics without the need for plugins and is widely used in web development for creating 3D visualizations, games, and animations. It supports a wide range of features, including lighting, materials, camera controls, and advanced geometry, and can be easily integrated into other web technologies, such as React and Vue.js. Three.js is an open-source library, making it freely available for developers to use and contribute to.

Lottie

Lottie is a file format and a library for rendering animations on the web and mobile devices. Lottie was created by Airbnb Design and is based on the open-source animation software, Bodymovin. Lottie files are lightweight vector animations that can be easily exported from design tools such as Adobe After Effects and imported into web and mobile applications. The animations are rendered using the Lottie library, which supports a wide range of platforms, including iOS, Android, and the web. The Lottie format is designed to be fast, scalable, and flexible, making it a popular choice for creating engaging animations and effects for web and mobile applications. The use of vector graphics also ensures that the animations remain sharp and clear at any resolution.

Conclusion

So there you have a list of the best tools out there to add interactivity to your website. I try to post new articles weekly on development and design. So If you want to see more articles like this subscribe to my email and let me know the topic you want me to discuss. Till next time, lets ride!!