Make Your React App Come Alive With Animations

There are many ways you can work with CSS animations using React, from a native solution to third-party libraries.

Why Use Animations in React?

There are many reasons why you might want to use animations in your React application. Some of the most common reasons include:

Making interactions feel more natural. Animations can help to make user interactions feel more natural and smooth. For example, if you’re using a toggle component, you might want to animate the toggle button between the “on” and “off” states. Another example is progress bars, you can create an animated progress bar for the pages of your react app. Providing visual feedback. Animations can provide visual feedback to the user. For example, if a user clicks on a button, you might want to animate the button to indicate that the app has registered that action. Guiding the user’s attention. Animations can guide the user’s attention to a particular element. For example, if you have a modal dialog that appears on the screen, you might want to use animation to draw the user’s attention to it. Creating a sense of urgency. Animations can create a sense of urgency or importance. For example, if you have a timer component that is counting down, you might want to use animation to reflect urgency as the deadline approaches.

There are several ways to add animations to React components. The three you’ll learn about using here are inline style animations, the react-animations library, and the react-simple-animate library.

Get started by creating a basic react app, then follow the method of your choice.

Method 1: Using Inline Style Animations

For example, let’s say you want to animate a component so that it fades in when you click a button. You can do this with the following code:

In this example, a style object has opacity and transition properties. The opacity is 0 when the component is not visible, and 1 when it is. The transition property is “opacity 2s”, which will cause the opacity to transition over two seconds when it changes.

The button toggles the visibility of the component. When someone clicks on the button, the isVisible state variable updates and the component will fade in or out depending on its current state.

Method 2: Using the react-animations Library

Another way to add animations to React components is to use a library such as react-animations. This library provides a set of pre-defined animations that you can use in your React components.

To use react-animations, you’ll first need to install the library:

You also need to install aphrodite, which is a dependency of react-animations:

Once you’ve installed the libraries, you can import the animations you want to use:

Then, you can use the animations in your components:

This example starts by importing the fadeIn and fadeOut animations from the react-animations library. It then defines a styles object with the fadeIn and fadeOut animations, and animationDuration set to two seconds.

The button will toggle the visibility of the component. When somebody clicks it, the isVisible state variable will update, and the component will fade in or out depending on its current state.

Method 3: Using the react-simple-animate Library

The react-simple-animate library provides a simple way to add animations to React components. It offers a declarative API which makes it easy to define complex animations.

To use the library, you need to install it first:

Then, you can use it in your components:

The Animate component fades in a div element. It starts with an opacity of 0 and ends with an opacity of 1. The play prop is set to true, which will cause the animation to play automatically when the component mounts.

The AnimateKeyframes component animates a div element over two seconds. The keyframes array specifies the start and end states of the animation. The first keyframe has an opacity of 0 and a translateX value of -100px. The second keyframe has an opacity of 1 and a translateX value of 0px.

Increase User Engagement With Animations

Now you know some of the ways that you can use animations in your React application. You can use animations to increase user engagement with your application.

For example, you might want to use animation to reward the user for completing a task. This could be something as simple as a short “spinner” animation or a more complex animation that plays when the user completes a level in a game.

You can also deploy your React application on the web for free with services like Github pages or Heroku.