How to use Velocity to easily add animations

Motion attracts our attention; it's an innate survival mechanism that served our ancestors well for thousands of years. It allowed them to detect predators sneaking up on them. Nowadays, it's mostly a leftover instinct that us web designers use to command the attention and interest of users on our sites.

Adding animation and transitions such as opacity fades, color changes, scaling, and 3D motion, turns an otherwise flat, static collage of words and images into a dynamic and interesting site. You should absolutely be adding animations to your website designs – when applied sparingly and with purpose, it makes them better.

Velocity is a free, lightweight library that lets you easily add animations to your sites, ranging from the simplest of animations to the most complex. Velocity outperforms all other animation libraries, is simple to use, and mimics the syntax of the most popular JavaScript library, jQuery. It's also well supported by all browsers and devices, and has been adopted by major companies like Uber and WhatsApp.

<html>
    <head>
    …
    </head>
    <body>
    …
        <script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-2.1.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/velocity/1.1.0/velocity.min.js"></script>
<script src="script.js"></script>
    </body>
</html>

<p id="example">
    This is an example element you can select and animate.
</p>

var $element = $("#example");

$element.velocity( … some command here … );

// Object defining the animation's final values of width (50%), and left (500px)
$element.velocity({ width: "500px", left: "500px" });

// Animates an element to a width of 300px over 500ms after a 1000ms delay.
$element.velocity({ width: "300px" }, { duration 500, delay: 1000 });

// Okay, only numerical value
$element.velocity("scroll", { duration: 500 })
// Okay, uses quotes
$element.velocity("scroll", { duration: "500ms" })
// Not okay, contains "ms" without quotes
$element.velocity("scroll", { duration: 500ms })

I've used the word easing a few times so far, and perhaps you're confused as it what that means. Easings determine the speed of an animation at different stages throughout its duration. For example, an "ease-in" easing gradually accelerates at the beginning of the animation and then remains constant until it ends. An "ease-out" easing starts at a linear speed, and gradually decelerates near the end of the animation. A "linear" easing has a constant speed throughout the duration, and looks very jarring and robotic.

// Animate an element to a width of 500px with an easing of "ease-in-out"
$element.velocity({ width: 500 }, { easing: "ease-in-out" });

$element
    // Animates the element to a height of 300px over 1000ms
    .velocity({ height: 300 }, { duration: 1000 })
    // Animates the element to a left position of 200px over 600ms after the width is finished animating
    .velocity({ top: 200 }, { duration: 600 })
    // Fades the element over 200ms out after it is done moving
    .velocity({ opacity: 0 }, { duration: 200 });

Note: You will notice that only the last velocity call has a ";" at the end of the line. This is extremely important. To chain together animations, all the "velocity" calls must be performed together on the same element, and you cannot terminate the command line using a semicolon. JavaScript ignores whitespace, so these calls would look like this: $element.velocity(...).velocity(...).velocity(...).

Single-page sites are trending in web design now, where a site is divided into sections, rather than into separate pages. As a result, clicking on a navigational link simply causes the page to scroll down to the appropriate page section. Without an animation, it's an instantaneous and jarring jump, providing the user with no context as to where this content is located relative to the rest of the page.

$element.velocity("scroll", { duration: 1200 });

// Animate a 100px tall element to a height of 200px over 500ms
$element.animate({ height: "200px" }, { duration: 500 });
// Animate the element back to its original height value of 100px over 500ms
$element.animate({ height: "100px" }, { duration: 500 });

// Animate a 100px tall element to a height of 200px over 500ms
$element.velocity({ height: "200px" }, { duration: 500 });
// Reverse previous animation – animate back to the original height of 100px over 500ms
$element.velocity("reverse");

// Animate the selected element to a height of 200px  over the default 400ms using a spring physics easing. Spring tension is set to 250, and friction is set to 10.
$element.velocity({ height: "200px", { easing: [ 250, 10 ] });

<div id="box">

</div>

#box {
    width: 100px; // Set box width to 100px
    height: 100px; // Set box height to 100px
    border: solid 1px #000; // Give the box a 1px solid black border to make it visible
}

// Select the box element by ID
$("#box")
    // Animate to a width of 200px over 500ms
.velocity({ width: 200px }, { duration: 500 })
// Animate to a height of 50px over 300ms directly after width stops animating
.velocity({ height: 50px }, { duration: 300 })
// Animate back to original width and height after height stops animating
.velocity("reverse");

<nav>
    <a class="nav-link" href="#product">Product</a>
...
    <a class="nav-link" href="#about">About</a>
</nav>

<div id="#product">
…
</div>

...

<div id="#about">
...
</div>

// Attach a click event to the "nav-link" class
$(".nav-link").on("click", function() {
// Grab the target page section's ID from the link's (contained within "this") href attribute
    var scrollTargetID = $(this).attr("href");
// Select this element by ID using jQuery
    var $scrollTarget = $(scrollTargetID);
    
    // Add the scroll animation to the element
    $scrollTarget.velocity("scroll", { duration: 1000 });
});

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How to use Velocity to easily add animations

What is Velocity.js?

How do I use Velocity?

How do I run this function?

Arguments

Property values

What is this "easing" business?

Chaining

Back to the features

Page scrolling

Animation reversal

Physics-Based Motion

Grande finale

Now go out and make the web dynamic

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