Animation Techniques

Vue provides the <Transition> and <TransitionGroup> components for handling enter / leave and list transitions. However, there are many other ways of using animations on the web, even in a Vue application. Here we will discuss a few additional techniques.

Class-based Animations

For elements that are not entering / leaving the DOM, we can trigger animations by dynamically adding a CSS class:

const disabled = ref(false)

function warnDisabled() {
  disabled.value = true
  setTimeout(() => {
    disabled.value = false
  }, 1500)
}

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      disabled: false
    }
  },
  methods: {
    warnDisabled() {
      this.disabled = true
      setTimeout(() => {
        this.disabled = false
      }, 1500)
    }
  }
}

<div :class="{ shake: disabled }">
  <button @click="warnDisabled">Click me</button>
  <span v-if="disabled">This feature is disabled!</span>
</div>

.shake {
  animation: shake 0.82s cubic-bezier(0.36, 0.07, 0.19, 0.97) both;
  transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0);
}

@keyframes shake {
  10%,
  90% {
    transform: translate3d(-1px, 0, 0);
  }

  20%,
  80% {
    transform: translate3d(2px, 0, 0);
  }

  30%,
  50%,
  70% {
    transform: translate3d(-4px, 0, 0);
  }

  40%,
  60% {
    transform: translate3d(4px, 0, 0);
  }
}

State-driven Animations

Some transition effects can be applied by interpolating values, for instance by binding a style to an element while an interaction occurs. Take this example for instance:

const x = ref(0)

function onMousemove(e) {
  x.value = e.clientX
}

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      x: 0
    }
  },
  methods: {
    onMousemove(e) {
      this.x = e.clientX
    }
  }
}

<div
  @mousemove="onMousemove"
  :style="{ backgroundColor: `hsl(${x}, 80%, 50%)` }"
  class="movearea"
>
  <p>Move your mouse across this div...</p>
  <p>x: {{ x }}</p>
</div>

.movearea {
  transition: 0.3s background-color ease;
}

In addition to color, you can also use style bindings to animate transform, width, or height. You can even animate SVG paths using spring physics - after all, they are all attribute data bindings:

Animating with Watchers

With some creativity, we can use watchers to animate anything based on some numerical state. For example, we can animate the number itself:

import { ref, reactive, watch } from 'vue'
import gsap from 'gsap'

const number = ref(0)
const tweened = reactive({
  number: 0
})

watch(number, (n) => {
  gsap.to(tweened, { duration: 0.5, number: Number(n) || 0 })
})

Type a number: <input v-model.number="number" />
<p>{{ tweened.number.toFixed(0) }}</p>

import gsap from 'gsap'

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      number: 0,
      tweened: 0
    }
  },
  watch: {
    number(n) {
      gsap.to(this, { duration: 0.5, tweened: Number(n) || 0 })
    }
  }
}

Type a number: <input v-model.number="number" />
<p>{{ tweened.toFixed(0) }}</p>