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Updated 3 months ago

the acquisition of greensocks (gsap) by webflow: implications and considerations

At a glance

The post discusses the acquisition of GSAP (GreenSock Animation Platform) by Webflow, and the community members express concerns about the future of GSAP and its pricing. Some community members are hopeful that GSAP will be integrated into Webstudio, Webflow's visual development platform, while others are skeptical about Webflow's ability to implement it seamlessly.

The comments discuss the potential impact of the acquisition, with some community members believing that GSAP will remain available for other websites, while others are concerned about the future of GSAP's development and innovation. There is also discussion about the new CSS native timeline feature, which some community members believe could potentially replace GSAP for certain use cases, though they acknowledge that it may not be as flexible as GSAP.

The Webstudio team responds to a community member's question, stating that they plan to create a better animation engine than Webflow's, and that they will have a way to build animations visually, though the exact technical details are still to be determined. The team also acknowledges the difficulty in prioritizing between animations and other features, such as Shopify integration and content editor experience.

Useful resources
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
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oh God, greensocks (GSAP) has been acquired by Webflow... Good move for them. But not sure it will be easy in the future to use it if they lock some features. I know they want to use it for theyr interaction engine V3 but I don't know if the pricing plan is gonna stay as it is or not...
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53 comments
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
ok all right. The current pricing and the librairy will stay as it is: https://gsap.com/blog/webflow-GSAP/
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
GSAP natively in Westudio would be JUST awesome!!!
ppaso_sb
yeah, the announcements from webflow are interesting at all. But they've bin balling around all the time. The problem on their side ist mostly the bugfree implementation and limits by price and cms.
MMatheus
I had always dreamed of the webstudio running on a gsap based animation engine, but I think that dream is over now.

big F
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Yes of course. The Keynote was interesting but it lack a lot of things:
  • The experience of the CMS is not very good for users (not as good as Strapi, Ghost, Hygraph... even Wordpress)
  • Nothing about Membership, E-commerce...
  • Roles are interesting
It think the vision of an headless CMS like Webstudio is really the key.
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
I don't know. The library will stay available for other websites (not only for Webflow). Maybe it will be possible to build on top of this...
ppaso_sb
yep. still loving webstudio more, even if it is in an earlier stage.
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Lot of websites relying on GSAP. They cannot stop the library like that.
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Me too! Full support 💪
ppaso_sb
the funniest part is the pricing on the new features. 😄 look at them and laugh.
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
yes it's really expensive, but if you need these feature by an another tool I think it would be the price too...

I think the very good move from Webflow is the acquisition of GSAP! The rest is "incredible" for the day to day usage.

And classes are still there. When you work with tokens and now variables with Webstudio I think I cannot go back to Webflow
PPhilipp
I also don’t think GSAP will discontinue their existing library – neither the free version nor the paid one. But it’s quite possible that they won’t maintain it as actively and will instead focus on optimizing Webflow interactions, meaning GSAP might not be as innovative in the long run.
OOleg Isonen
there is no reason to think that the aquisition changes anything at all, gsap will stay where it was
OOleg Isonen
in fact gsap is quite old and has lots of legacy stuff in it
OOleg Isonen
it doesn't support the new CSS native timeline which will have an incredible boost for performance
OOleg Isonen
I would even think they will make the paid version free actually.
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
I didn't know they have a lot of legacy.
OOleg Isonen
They are like 15-20 yo
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Agree with you. The new CSS native timeline is gonna be really nice for animations. For now, I don't know if I can use it for projects or if it's too early.

Seems ok to use it: https://caniuse.com/?search=css-scroll-timeline

Safari and Firefox are not ready yet.

I don't know if this css-scroll-timeline is as flexible as GSAP for animation.

Demos are really promising: https://scroll-driven-animations.style/
OOleg Isonen
Yeah, rn it would need a fallback.
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
I gonna try to use it with Webstudio to make some test. I don't know if the community has examples about that
OOleg Isonen
Not in ws but There are some in general
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
According to you when do you think this new CSS native timeline will be ready for production? (1 - 2y?) Do you think it will replace GSAP?
OOleg Isonen
You mean when its going to be ready to be used WITHOU fallbacks? yearh probably 2y.
OOleg Isonen
It will replace a significant amount of gsap people use on websites. Most of what people do to make the site look fancy is scroll based animation where durig scroll elements apply transforms
OOleg Isonen
But animation timeline ca do more than scroll animation
OOleg Isonen
While watching for a particular example, found these amazing scroll examples with pure css
https://x.com/jh3yy/status/1836380999644504486

https://x.com/jh3yy/status/1833663719466836224
OOleg Isonen
https://dev.to/hoainhoblogdev/css-2024-breakthrough-redefining-animations-with-animation-timeline-view-1o3m
OOleg Isonen
and more https://x.com/jh3yy/status/1831428806151958876
OOleg Isonen
https://x.com/jh3yy/status/1838142175944548471
OOleg Isonen
found the one:

https://x.com/paul_uiux/status/1841437472711938322

This is effectively also a scroll animation but look at that ... you wouldn't have guessed
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Whaou!! Just incredible. Didn't know those guys! Thanks.

Seems very promising cannot wait to use it!

@Oleg Isonen do you plan to make an animation engine like Webflow or not? It seems they rely on jquery but it's old technology so I don't think you will choose this for building an animation engine. According to our discussion, GSAP seems not the good technology to choose for performance. So what's your vision : no animation engine (and relying to css animation and some scripts if we need), or do you plan to make an animation engine? (see it on the roadmap)

(to my mind it's really not a prio, and I would prefer to prio Shopify integration than an animation engine because we can handle animation with some JS and CSS)

thanks for all!!
OOleg Isonen
do you plan to make an animation engine like Webflow or not?


No, we plan to make a better one 🙂
OOleg Isonen
GSAP seems not the good technology to choose for performance

GSAP has great performance for a JavaScript library, but with native CSS it can not compete
OOleg Isonen
We will have a way to build animations visually, exact technical details are TBD
OOleg Isonen
Re prio - really difficult decision. Every day people tell us they can't use webstudio because they need animations visually.
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Yep prio is difficult on this point. I'm more technical so to my point Shopify is more important because it can attract more users and clients. Animations are possible right now with a bit of CSS and JS.

Even if you consider Webflow, best animations are build with GSAP (so we have to code). If it's just for some animation like basic scroll animations I think it would be better to have some templates / library with some examples that users can copy/paste.

Like you said, a lot of users needs slide, fade, scroll animations... which is pretty basic. If you need to go further we need to code it.

I think it's gonna be a lot of work for your team for some pretty "basic animations" for 80% of users.

It's just a point of view, it can be challenge. To my mind :
  • Shopify integration (=> e-commerce = new clients, new users)
  • Component Editor and shared library (=> dev experience)
  • Content Editor Experience (=> easier to use Webstudio with clients)
will give more power to Webstudio. I'm open to discuss this, I know it's difficult to make prio.
OOleg Isonen
yeah, visual animations are for simpler use cases, though majority of use cases are simple, so even technical users don't want to use gsap for that
OOleg Isonen
library with some examples that users can copy/past

We already released a small library called animation, its in the marketplace, its just adding a few attributes and animation is done
OOleg Isonen
I think it's gonna be a lot of work for your team for some pretty "basic animations" for 80% of users.

Well its still not clear in terms of prioritization, because these 80% of users need this to even consider Webstudio a serious competitor to webflow and framer
OOleg Isonen
Shopify is very important, no doubt, but I don't know how many. seriuos builders would build it on shopify before overall adoption is going to rich a critical mass, some will for sure
OOleg Isonen
So I am in between content editor experience and animations right now in terms of prioritization
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
All right. You know your users better than me. If it is a very high demand on this, so let's do it. But as a "developer perspective" there is already some solutions for animations. But I'm very interested on what are your ideas to build this animation engine.

To my mind, Content Editor Experience would be prio. But I know it's often better to make "marketing" with animations and attract users with some good templates with some animations 😉

I gonna wait (hopefully not a too long time...) for Shopify integration. I don't see any good frontend builder like Webstudio for e-commerce right now 😭

What you will choose, you will have my full support 💪
OOleg Isonen
Templates is the biggest blocker for adoption.
OOleg Isonen
Most people even designers with skills don't want to build them from scratch.
OOleg Isonen
Now with variables and Craft, we will hopefully get many more templates in the ecosystem
OOleg Isonen
with that more adoption
OOleg Isonen
but it may be slowed down if templates require custom code for animations
OOleg Isonen
to make templates great we need nocode animations
OOleg Isonen
in the end what matters is time saved to make a site and that's basically: templates + AI
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Good point!
OOleg Isonen
https://scroll-driven-animations.style/
MMilan Boisgard | Uncode School
Yes I see that. Really like it !
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