How Easy Is It to Build Web Effects Now? A Few Frontend Components and Animation Resources to Share

AI translation notice: This English version was translated from the original Chinese article with AI assistance. Some nuances may differ from the original.

This is a short resource roundup with not much substance to it—just sharing some very cool website component resources I have come across recently.

CanvasUI – Experimental Products

canvasui.devCanvas UI↗A component library built on Chrome's experimental HTML-in-Canvas feature

This is a component library built on fairly new technology. It uses Chrome's recently introduced experimental HTML-in-Canvas feature, which lets DOM/HTML content take part in rendering and visual transforms inside a Canvas. This is still a relatively new browser capability, so compatibility deserves special attention. Fortunately, Canvas UI has thought about fallbacks itself and provides a degraded experience on browsers that do not support it: your site still works normally, but without the effects it simply will not look as good.

It is especially suited to pages that need complex visuals such as 3D, liquid, glass, or shatter effects. Take a look at the previews on the site and decide whether they are the effect you want. Personally, I think it is fine to experiment and play with, but I would not strongly recommend putting it into production: for one, compatibility is quite limited, and for another, it is fairly performance-hungry and not very friendly to low-end devices.

React Bits – Special Effects

reactbits.devReact Bits↗A bunch of small React effect components

A collection of effect components centered on React, with implementations also available in JavaScript / TypeScript, CSS / Tailwind, and other variants. It has all kinds of cool effects, most of them focused on text effects and interactive background effects. The emphasis is on rather unusual visuals, and it is a bit flashy for its own sake—you can draw plenty of experience and inspiration from it, but I would not recommend using it in bulk.

Aceternity – Practical and Grounded

ui.aceternity.comAceternity↗More small React components, but these are mostly practical

This is another React component library, but the overall style is more pragmatic, easy to use, and broadly applicable.

Some templates require payment and do look good, but the free tier is plenty. Personally, I think handing those paid templates to today's AI and building the effects yourself would not necessarily turn out worse—it might actually fit your needs better. It is well worth exploring to pick up some interaction and design inspiration.

Magic UI – As a Supplement

magicui.designMagic UI↗Another widget and template library, built with React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Motion

This is still a widget library mainly for React. It is not very different from Aceternity above, but it includes some interaction effects the other one lacks. The site does not have much content, but it works well as a complement.

Motion – Designing Your Own Animations

motion.devMotion↗An animation library for JS, React, and Vue

More accurately, Motion is an animation library rather than a UI component library in the traditional sense. It provides animation capabilities in JavaScript, React, Vue, and other environments, and can handle page transitions, gestures, layout changes, and all kinds of interaction animations.

My own site uses a few Motion effects, and they work quite well. If you do not just want to “find a ready-made component” but want to control the animation yourself, Motion is more worth studying than a plain component library—go explore it.

anime.js – An Animation Dictionary

animejs.comanime JS↗An animation library for vanilla JS and React

The website itself is ridiculously cool. It is a web library focused mainly on animation effects, packed with all kinds of animation curves and a lot of design effects for interactive elements.

You can use it to animate DOM, SVG, CSS properties, and various other objects, which makes it very suitable for studying animation timing, easing, and interaction patterns. Think of it as a dictionary of animation effects; I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn design.

Animate UI – Small Touch-ups

animate-ui.comanimate-ui↗Yet another React component library

Animate UI has fewer components than the libraries above, but what is worth looking at is its micro-interactions, especially the animations for components like Icon and Button. For a project that already has a complete UI and just feels the page is “a bit lifeless,” effects like these are actually quite practical.

Inspira UI – A Vue-Focused Component Library

inspira-ui.comInspira UI↗Finally, an animation library made specifically for Vue and Nuxt

Everything above is a React component library—so what are we Vue users supposed to eat?

Haha, well, here it comes.

This is an animation library built mainly for Vue and Nuxt, and its effects are comprehensive—everything from simple UI touches to full-page effects. Most of what is inside is enough to match the React component libraries mentioned above.

That said, this does not mean Vue users can only use Vue component libraries. React components obviously cannot be copied straight into a Vue project, but many visual effects do not actually depend on React itself—especially those built with CSS, SVG, Canvas, and plain JavaScript. Now that we have AI, porting a React component to Vue is usually much easier than before, so when I look for components I do not pay much attention to whether they are React or Vue.

21st.dev – My Personal Go-To ✨

21st.dev21st↗The site I use most myself, with what feels like the most varied effects

This is the site I use the most myself. The animated title effect on my homepage and the CINEMA effect on the Movies page both started as inspiration from this site, blended with a few ideas of my own. The previews and categories on the site make the whole experience intuitive, it is convenient to use, and the effects are comprehensive. I highly recommend browsing around and playing with it.

Final Thoughts

In the past, seeing a cool effect usually meant studying its code from top to bottom and then figuring out how to jam it into your own project. With AI, it is a completely different world now and much simpler: find an effect you like, then tell AI how the component is implemented, what its dependencies are, and what you need, and have it make the changes for you. This has become a very practical workflow.

So when I browse these sites now, I no longer really treat them as mere “component libraries.” Often I am just looking for a visual effect I like, and then I reimplement it myself.

The component library supplies inspiration and reference; AI helps turn it into something that fits your own site.

I have recommended a lot of component libraries with animation effects above, but for a web page, the most important thing is not how cool it looks, but whether using it matches user intuition and whether the experience is smooth. A site whose learning curve and device requirements are reasonable is the best kind of site.

Animation should help users understand a page's structure, state, and feedback, not make them wait just to watch an animation. Too many visual effects can not only interfere with getting information but also add performance and device overhead.