Different Types of Web Animations and How They Add to The User-Friendliness of Your App

Nowadays, there are many different types of animations that are popular in the app developing world. The mobile app developers consider that animations are a great tool for improving the usability of the app. The animations have not only inspired mobile app developers but these are also popular amongst the web designers.

Yes, animations are good at attracting people. But there are many other roles that they play in the mobile app. There are many different purposes of animations. The animations help in engaging the users for longer period of time and also help in putting focus particular information. Moreover, the animations are helpful in giving feedback, and are also used for guiding users through the app or website. The website animations that are creative can also help in making the website or app more famous.  

In this article, we will discuss the basic types of web app animations and their purposes.

Types of web app animations

Let’s see what the different types of UI web app animations are. It will also help you to analyze that for what purpose you can use them.

Loading

Nobody likes to wait much. You may look here and there and at your watch while waiting for something. During this time, you may want to do something else.

The user may also need to wait while opening some mobile app because some apps do not load quickly. So, the home page of the app of other pages, PDF files, tables, maps, videos, and other content may take time to load. Now, how you can prevent your users from getting bored in this time? The best way is to use animations to keep the users busy. This will make the wait time less frustrating and will also show that the app is running faster. Hence, the loading animations must be used.

Loading animations come in different types like spin, jump, or disappear. Moreover, the short cartoons, progress bars, or shape-changing animations can also be used. 

You can create cute and performance-focused loading animations with the help of number of premade CSS and JavaScript libraries. One great example is the set of loaders from Connor Atherton.

Welcoming animations

The basic purpose of the welcoming animations is to engage the visitors from the first seconds of visiting your website. You can make your web apps more appealing by using creative welcoming animations. This will help you in generating a good first impression on the user. These animations will also lead t more conversions. There are different types of welcoming animations. Let’s have a look on common types.

1)      Particle animations

Particle animation is one of the most attractive one. It may appear on the home page of the app. These animations help the users in having a relaxed feeling as it is equivalent to light meditation. Particle animation is of two types; interactive or non-interactive.

An interactive particle animation which is also known as the real-time animations can be interacted with using the cursor. Hence, the response depends on the cursor movement of the user. These animations can be hypnotizing.  The website Particle Love that is created by Edan Kwan is a perfect example of the real -time animation.

On the other hand, no user participation is required in non-interactive particle animations. Still, these animations are impressive. Moreover, these animations have the ability of running in the background.

You may have heard about Typography or type animations. These animations also belong to the category of particle animations. Type animations are connected with images of moving letters and these animations can also be interactive or non-interactive.

You can see Yalantis homepage in order to know that how the type animations look.

2)      Background video

You can also grab the attention of the users by using soundless video in the background of a home page. These kinds of welcoming animations can be seen on Canva United website. On that website a background video is used that complements the central text on the homepage of the website. As the background video is very fast so it can be seen many ties by the users. In this way, the users spend more time on the website.  

You can implement a simple background video on a website by using a standard HTML5 Video element. However, a little bit of JavaScript is required, if you want to make it interactive.

3)      3D animations

This is also a type of welcoming animation. These animations help the designers in offering more opportunities to create realistic and complex visuals to attract attention that is why these animations have got much attention in recent years. Some designers have also worked on the mixing of 2D with 3D objects. In this way, you can generate deeper and more sophisticated experiences.

Similarly like the background videos and particles, you can use interactive 3D animations can be used for gaining attention of users. Interactive ones are those that react to key clicks, mouse clicks, button clicks, and finger movements on mobile devices. Usually, these animations are placed on the home page in order to engage the users in their first minutes of visiting a website. With the enhancement in the capabilities of web browsers, in future, there will be more 3D animations as compared to the standard 2D approaches.

You can create the interactive 3D animations with the help of the HTML5 Canvas element, which allows the developers to draw graphics on the fly by applying JavaScript

Scrolling

You can make the scrolling also engaging by using the animated scrolling. The biggest advantage of scrolling animations is that these animations give control to users. There are different types of animated scrolling like one-page scrolling, scroll drawing, background changes, and more. Though, the basic principle is same for all types.

One of the most common types of scrolling is the scrolling with the parallax effect. By using this type of scrolling, you can create an unforgettable browsing experience. This type of scrolling uses numerous backgrounds that move at different speeds relative to the foregrounds that creates a feeling of depth. Few years back, Parallax scrolling was famous among web designers but now this effect is not used much. Parallax scroll effect can e created by using a lightweight Java Script library known as Rellax. But you should not overload your users. Animated scrolling should help them in getting the information that they require and in concentrating on the essentials.

Sidebar navigation

Let’s consider a web app having a complex structure. The app contains many unclear buttons so you have a great difficulty in finding the thing for which you are looking. Then after sometime you may get frustrated and want to quit the app and open a new one that is more easy to use.

Yes, we know that you will never want your users to experience this on your website. So the best way is to make it attractive as well as convenient to use. The best solution to this problem is the animated navigation. Well-designed animated navigation engage user on the web app so they spend more time on it.

Sidebar navigation or the vertical sliding navigation is the most suitable alternative for creating a compact and clear web app. It consists of small animated menu icons. The visitors can reach these menu icons easily on the side of the screen. In this way, the users can easily access your web app’s menu without even scrolling. You can get number of libraries from W3 Schools for implementing the sidebar menu navigation in your web app.

Visual feedback

There are some situations in which you need to give information to the users that whether their action was successful or not. Or you can also say that your web app should give feedback. User’s attention can be drawn with the help of animations to the actions that they are performing. In this way, the users immediately come to know the status of their actions. The visual feedback animations have two main types; the warning animations and hover effect animations.

1)      Warning animation

You can warn the users visually when something goes wrong with the help of these animations. Such as, the animations can tell users to repeat an action if it has not been completed successfully or to click a button again if the field has been filled incorrectly.  Warning animations can be of different forms like the red crosses, sad emojis, or other types of symbols that tell users about invalid actions.

You can use CSS Shake library for creating a vibrating and shaking warning animations.

2)      Hover animation

You can use these animations for different purposes. Such as the users can find out that whether an object is clickabale or not when they hover over it. There are buttons that can light up, change form or color, or show hints.

Moreover, with the help of these animations you can tell the users that whether their actions have been successful or not. For example, if user submits a form then an animation can show that the Submit button has been pressed or not.  

Hence, these are some of the types of animations that you can use in your web app, we recommend you to get the services from Mobile App Development for creating animations for your web. 

Author Bio:

Shawn Mike has been working with writing challenging clients for over five years. His educational background in the technical field and business studies has given him the edge to write on many topics. He occasionally writes blog articles for Dynamologic Solutions.

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Created on Jun 28th 2019 06:01. Viewed 691 times.

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