The feature we absolutely need is the content editor feature (saw it's planned). We need a way to give control to our customer over what I call their "static content" texts, images etc... without letting access to the full editor
The other features that would be really appreciated but are not blocker for us is a good CSS grid system (we mainly design using CSS grid, not flexbox) and variables (which would give us the power we need when our graphists create a full design system)
And an animation engine. We can use gsap by waiting an internal solution, but it's more time consuming and harder to maintain
Have you also seen the template we made for simple attributes based animations?
Yes I saw it, can do the job for simple animation, but I'm an experienced developper, no problem using gsap to have even more control. It would be better to have an intergrated system like others builders, but it's not game changer to me like an editor mode
Curious to learn: why do you think visual animation builder is more maintainable than gsap. Its not a trick question. Usually developers think the other way around.
I's more maintainable for several reason :
- The visual interface webflow / ycode / framer gives is really well done and is more intuitive than gsap
- You know where to search to find the animation, with gsap in embed html block, it's "splitted" everywhere in your dom
- Personnally I know gsap quite well, but I have junior colleague that would have difficulties to do some animations with gsap whereas they can do better things with webflow animation system, so I imagine it's easier for junior
- It's visual, so it's far easier to polish your animation (start, stop, strenth, easing etc....)
I will play devil's advocate here:
- As a developer, gsap is supposed to be intuitive, or what do you mean exactly?
- Convention can be used to place html embed always in one place, name it one name
- Is that a non developer? GSAP is not hard for junior dev IMHO
4.Agree for simple animations
1 - It's intuitive once you know it, nothing is more intuitive than a good made UX. If you are not agree with that, the whole concept of webstudio and visual builder collapse 😉
2 - Yes, but you can also create chaos, so it's up to the developper, whereas an animation panel is the same for everyone
3 - That's because your junior years are far behind, I often have apprentice under my authority, and for 66% of them, gsap is too much, they have to be confident with html and css before even thinking about javascript
I would also add that a good animation interface can get you inspired. Try something you couldn't think about, just because it's here and easy to access. Globally, it make the project better
Whereas with gsap, if it's not asked by your designer or done in figma, you don't try things
I said I am playing devil's advocate, hope you are familiar with the concept 🤣 I intentionally challenge you to see the flaws in your logic. If we are talking about developers who can write basic js, wouldn't GSAP be the asbolute beauty? work of art, nirvana, everything they dreamed of 🤣
- Sure, but within one agency it shouldn't be a problem, a few conventions must be created anyways for a better consistency
I would also add that a good animation interface can get you inspired.
100%
I guess the biggest unchallengeable truth about this is that animations are visual and lots of things need to be played with.
If you have to first read docs and write code before you can try your idea instead of playing with knobs and sliders - you already lost the motivation to try the idea out.
Time to animation is what matters when you want to stay motivated to make something interesting.
It gets interesting when animation is very complex and needs to be synchronized across many nodes and have a consistent timeline. This is right now as far as I know all animation interfaces suck and gsap and alike are better, because you have an overview of all elements and overview of all timelines and what they are doing relative to each other.
I am hoping to solve both in a visual way. Its a challenge.
I have absolutely no problem with that, I know the concept I'm a good devil advocate myself 😈. Gsap is fantastic and it could be a good move to base your animation engine on it (basically providing a visual interface to gsap) if it can speedup the development of the animation engine (and if it's legal 😅 )
Yes, I think it will be a biiiiiiig challenge. If you alreay reach the level of webflow/figma/ycode, I would be happy already, but, until now, you surpassed them so I'm quite curious about how you will surprise me again here 😉
