Chapter 8. Animating with GreenSock

In the previous chapter, we went over some of the reasons you might choose GreenSock as an animation library. In this chapter, we’ll cover the basics of how to animate.

Even if you’re more comfortable with CSS, you can still master GreenSock. You don’t necessarily need to know everything about JavaScript to use it for animation. Certainly people who are comfortable with JavaScript will pick it up a little faster and be able to debug with a little more ease, but I do think the syntax is simple and straightforward enough that a CSS developer will be able to get to grips with it. Heck! It’s even easier than CSS in some ways: CSS separates concerns by putting the keyframes in one area and applying them on the properties separately, while GreenSock allows you to manipulate everything in one spot.

GreenSock has been under development for 10 years: it was previously a Flash tool. This gives it an enormous leg up on the competition, as the designers are intimately familiar with the issues users run into. They are also very approachable, and there are some regulars around to help on the forums, so if you get stuck there’s a pretty good community around to help you get back on your feet.

Let’s get started!

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