In the past few years, browsers have come a long way when it comes to supporting newer CSS properties that allow developers to create nice effects and animations using just pure CSS.
There is a lot of browser support for using different transitions and keyframe animations in your projects now. You no longer have to rely on JavaScript libraries to add basic animations.
Animating different elements on a webpage is now easier than ever. However, it can still be very confusing or daunting for absolute beginners. In this post, we will cover some of the best CSS animation libraries on CodeCanyon that you can use to add fancy CSS animation to your webpages today.
CSS Animations and Effects on CodeCanyon
If you head over to the CSS Animations and Effects section on CodeCanyon, you will see that there are currently over 140 different libraries related to CSS animations.
New libraries are added periodically to the collection and you can select one from the best sellers or apply your own filters to fine tune the results.
There are libraries to animate all kinds of elements or apply different kinds of effects to elements like buttons.
12 Best CSS Animations Libraries (on CodeCanyon for 2020)
CSS3 Image Hover Effects
The first one on our list is CSS3 Image Hover Effects. You can use it to add around 17 different kinds of image hover animations.
This includes basic effects like fading and sliding overlays as well as more advanced animations like splitting overlays and joining overlays. Other interesting effects include image levitation on their shadow as well as image stacks.
Visit the description page to know more about the library. The included video on the description page shows all the animations in action.
SolidEffects—CSS3 Image Hover Effects
The SolidEffects CSS3 animation library is perfect for people who want to add truly unique image hover animations to their websites.
There are over 150 pure CSS based animation effects that look fantastic. They will definitely help you grab the attention of your visitors.
The image hover effects generally fall under following categories:
- image integration effects (horizontal and vertical)
- image dispersion effects
- venetian blinds effects
- slide and sweep effects
- fold effects
- zoom effects
- blur, saturate and mosaic effects
Each of these animation categories include multiple animation effects that animate the overlay with different speeds in directions.
The customization is really easy because the downloaded product include LESS files to quickly change different aspects of the animation like the overlay color.
CSS3 Image—Text Hover Effects
The CSS3 Image—Text Hover Effects library is ideal for people who want to use a combination of image hover effects with some text effects.
There are 8 standard background animations that you can use with 14 different text effects. You can also combine multiple animation effects to show them on a single hover.
There is an option to choose between light and dark overlays for images to blend with your website theme.
Images can be displayed in 8 different types of boxes. This includes full-width images as well as image thumbnails.
Make sure you check out the live preview on the description page to see all the nice animations in action.
CSS3 Mega Tooltip Animation Pack
This CSS3 Mega Tooltip Animation Pack offers a great solution for people who want to integrate nice animations with different tooltips on their website.
The animation pack comes with 10 different tooltip animations. There are 8 different predefined color options. However, you can change the CSS files to add your own unique colors.
There is support for all major browsers. You can even support browsers as old as IE8 with a fix included in the download files after purchase.
The download files also contain detailed documentation and HTML samples that illustrate how to use the animation pack effectively.
tFigure—Image Captions
The tFigure—Image Captions library offers five different hover animations to display image captions.
You can use them to show nicely animated captions for different images. The overlays for each animation are available in four different colors.
The animations themselves are pretty simple. However, the way in which the captions are laid out on the overlays makes them very attractive.
These animations are framework independent so you can install them on any website you want. They are also easily customizable so you can make sure that the color scheme of the overlay matches the theme of your website.
Check out the animation’s live preview page to see the awesome image caption animation in action.
Animated Loaders Kit
There are a lot of times where users might have to wait a while for a process to complete. This might be a very large image that has to load or some other computation process that needs to complete.
If the process takes a couple of seconds, it is a good practice to let users know that you are working on it. A good way to do that is with simple animated loaders.
The Animated Loaders Kit is perfect for this situation. It comes with 10 CSS-only animated loaders.
There are many advantages of using these pure CSS based animated loaders. They are easy to customize. It will change only a couple of minutes to change the color, font and size of the loaders. You can also change the animation speed. They have a very small file size compared to using GIF files.
The best way to appreciate how nice they are is to see the live preview on from the description page.
Image Hover Effects Collection
This Image Hover Effects Collection kit was added fairly recently to CodeCanyon and comes with 20 different animation styles.
They follow a responsive design philosophy and support all major browsers. So you can be rest assured that any effects you use on your website will look good on all devices and all screen sizes.
The animations are also fully customizable and you can easily change the overlay and text colors for all animations to better align them with the overall theme of your own website.
The code is well documented so it would be easier to make changes whenever necessary. You should definitely check out the live preview to see how good these hover animations are.
Dex Preloader Kit
This Dex Preloader Kit also contains over 30 different preloaders that you can easily integrate in your projects.
They are completely different in style from the Animated Loaders kit we covered above. For instance, these ones are created using a single background color. You can easily change this preloader color to the dominant color on your website.
The animations are also different and the preloaders use a variety of shapes like circles, squares and lines to create the animation.
You can also add a little bit of text under each preloader to let users know what is going on in the background.
This kit was also added fairly recently to CodeCanyon and has a lot of offer for a very low price.
Free CSS Animation Libraries for 2020
Generally, you can expect these paid CSS animation libraries to have a lot of variety in the animations compared to free alternatives. They also come with free support for six months and lifetime updates.
Many times, these premium libraries also support old browsers. However, this might not be the case with free animation libraries.
It might be easier for anyone who is just starting out to simply use these paid libraries. However, if you don’t have the budget to purchase these paid plugins, we have also listed some free alternatives below.
Here are four free CSS animation libraries that you can use in your projects:
image hover.css
This library gives you the option to add simple image hover animations from different directions. It comes with 40 different hover animations.
SlipHover
This is also a free image hover animation library. However, it only comes with basic sliding animations.
The unique features of this library is that the hover animations are aware of the cursor direction. So, the overlay will appear to move in from the left side if the user hovers over the image from the left side.
animate.css
This animation library is not aimed at a specific use case like image hover animations or tooltips.
It is simply a general purpose library that you can use to animate different elements on a webpage. There are a bunch of classes that you can add to different elements to control the speed and delay of the animation.
loaders.css
This library consists of pure CSS based loading animations. You can use them in your project if you are looking for some nice preloader animations.
Additional Resources
It can be hard to figure out where to start for an absolute beginner. We are listing some tutorials here which will make it easier for you to understand how CSS animations work and how you can start using them in your own projects.
You should start by reading this tutorial that provides a beginner level introduction to CSS animation. After that, you should consider learning how to use CSS variables for animation.
Using different pre-built CSS animation libraries is not hard at all. However, having a basic understanding of the concepts will go a long way when it comes to making changes to these animations on trying to create something of your own in future.
You should also consider reading these two tutorials that teach you how to create your own CSS based animations for scratch. The first tutorial is for basic hover effects while the second one is a quick tip for page loading animations.
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Final Thoughts
Using a bit of animation for different elements on your website can make the content more interesting and engaging.
Coming up with our own unique animations from scratch can take some time. So, we listed some of the best free and premium CSS based animation libraries that will help you get started in no time.
New animations and effects are added all the time to CodeCanyon—you can choose from from one of the best sellers or try something fresh and new.