If you’ve ever wanted your web UI to come alive — with motion that’s smooth, precise, and cross-browser friendly — then the GreenSock Animation Platform (GSAP) is absolutely worth your time. In this blog post I’ll walk you through what it is, why it’s so compelling (especially now that it’s 100 % free), show you a recent video tutorial to get started, and then share a few clear code examples to spark your creativity.

What GSAP is & why it matters

At its core, GSAP is a JavaScript library (plus a suite of plugins) built specifically for web animations. According to the official site:

“GSAP allows you to effortlessly animate anything JS can touch. Delivering silky-smooth performance and unmatched support so you can focus on the fun stuff.” (gsap.com)

Here are some of the standout benefits:

🎯 Key Advantages

• Performance & compatibility: GSAP handles lots of the browser quirks beneath the hood, meaning your animations are more reliable and performant. (The Software House)

• Flexible targets: You can animate DOM elements, CSS properties, SVGs, even numeric & object properties in JS — basically “anything JS can touch”. (gsap.com)

• Advanced sequencing & control: With constructs like tweens and timelines, you get fine-grained control over play/pause/reverse, nesting, labels, etc. (gsap.com)

• Plugins for special effects: Scroll‐based animations, morphing SVGs, draggable UI, etc — many capabilities beyond just “move this box”. (gsap.com)

• Free to use: Perhaps most importantly for many developers, GSAP is now free (including bonus plugins) thanks to the support from Webflow. (gsap.com)

In short: if you want robust animations (rather than basic CSS transitions), GSAP gives you a modern, production-ready set of tools.

Recent video tutorial

Here’s a great recent tutorial (2025) to help you get going visually:

GSAP Text Effects: Stunning Scroll Animations Tutorial (2025)

In this video you’ll see step-by-step how to create scroll-driven text animations using GSAP. It’s a good complement to the code examples below.

Getting started — installation

Before diving into examples, you’ll need to add GSAP to your project. You’ve got multiple choices: CDN, NPM, or local files. From the docs:

<!-- via CDN -->
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/gsap/3.13.0/gsap.min.js"></script>

(cdnjs)

Or for npm/yarn:

npm install gsap

(gsap.com)

And if you’re going to use plugins (ScrollTrigger, MorphSVG, etc), you’ll often do:

gsap.registerPlugin(ScrollTrigger, …);

(gsap.com)

Important note: GSAP’s pricing page now states:

“GSAP is now 100% free for all users …” (gsap.com)
And the installation docs reiterate:
“Thanks to Webflow GSAP is now 100% FREE including ALL of the bonus plugins like SplitText, MorphSVG, and all the others that were exclusively available to Club GSAP members.” (gsap.com)

So you really do get full access for free.

Example animations

Here are a few neat code snippets to illustrate GSAP’s power. You can copy/paste and tailor them.

1. Basic tween

<div class="box" style="width:100px;height:100px;background:rebeccapurple;"></div>

<script>
  gsap.to(".box", {
    x: 200,
    rotation: 360,
    duration: 2,
    ease: "power2.inOut"
  });
</script>

This moves the .box 200px along the X-axis, rotates it 360°, over 2 seconds, using a smooth ease. Based on core documentation. (gsap.com)

2. From / FromTo

// animate *from*
gsap.from(".box", {
  y: -100,
  opacity: 0,
  duration: 1.5,
  ease: "bounce.out"
});

// animate from‐to
gsap.fromTo(".box", 
  { scale: 0, backgroundColor: "#ff0000" },
  { scale: 1, backgroundColor: "#00ff00", duration: 1, repeat: -1, yoyo: true }
);

Utilising the .from() and .fromTo() methods as described in the docs. (Saeloun Blog)

3. Timeline sequencing

var tl = gsap.timeline({ repeat: 1, yoyo: true });

tl.to(".box1", { x: 100, duration: 1 })
  .to(".box2", { y: 150, duration: 1 })
  .to(".box3", { rotation: 45, duration: 1 });

Here you create a timeline to control multiple animations in sequence. The timeline gives you full control: pause, reverse, labels, etc. (gsap.com)

4. Scroll-based animation with plugin

gsap.registerPlugin(ScrollTrigger);

gsap.to(".panel", {
  x: 500,
  scrollTrigger: {
    trigger: ".panel",
    start: "top center",
    end: "bottom 100px",
    scrub: 1,
    pin: true
  }
});

This uses the ScrollTrigger plugin to animate .panel in response to scroll. GSAP’s Scroll tools are very powerful. (gsap.com)

Why you might pick GSAP for your next project

Given the blog topic and your interests (you’ve asked about a WordPress plugin and frontend interface previously), here are some reasons GSAP might be a good fit:

• If you need interactive UI animations (dragging, sorting, list transitions) and want them to feel smooth — GSAP supports that set of use-cases.

• Because it’s framework-agnostic, you can use it in plain JS, React, or in a WordPress environment and mix it with whatever you’re building.

• For things like print-friendly view transitions, modal popups, or drag/drop feedback UI — animations handled by GSAP can elevate UX.

• Since it’s free and mature, there’s a large community and many resources/tutorials to draw from.

• If you care about performance on lower-powered devices, GSAP tends to outperform many simpler animation libraries. (cdnjs)

A few tips and best practices

• Always test on different devices — many animations look great on desktop but may feel heavy or laggy on mobile. GSAP helps but you still have to keep performance in mind.

• Use gsap.registerPlugin() when using plugins, so bundlers/tree-shakers don’t drop code you need. (gsap.com)

• Keep your animations accessible — avoid overly fast motion, excessive movement, respect prefers-reduced-motion where applicable.

• Use timelines for complex sequences rather than chaining many .to() calls manually — helps maintain readability and control.

• Consider using .matchMedia() (GSAP supports this) when you need different animations for mobile vs desktop.

Conclusion

In short: GSAP is a mature, powerful, free animation library that’s excellent for modern web projects. Whether you’re building a simple UI interaction or a full motion-rich experience, it gives you strong control, good performance, and lots of flexibility.

Some may remember this song. I wrote it in 2013. Today, Suno made it sound like I heared it in my head back then.

Yesterday I stumbled upon this image.

Few seconds and one prompt later, Claude AI made this animation of it:

After training 600 students in WordPress over just twelve months and managing close to 1,000 WordPress sites, I've been reflecting on what drove its success.

Let me be upfront about what puzzles me regarding its widespread adoption:

1. WordPress is resource-heavy software, consuming up to 100MB for a basic, empty installation - no media files included. Yes, you read that correctly: 100 MB. It's excessive.

2. Security concerns keep me on edge. WordPress has earned a reputation as one of the most vulnerable web platforms available. The sites I manage face hundreds of intrusion attempts daily.

3. Performance is a significant problem - WordPress runs sluggishly and demands substantial processing resources and memory. Even modest 10-page WordPress sites require dedicated caching solutions just to function properly. This shouldn't be necessary.

5. The platform isn't user-friendly. Creating attractive websites with WordPress is genuinely challenging. Only a small fraction of my students have managed to impress me with their results. The majority struggle to produce visually appealing sites, wrestling with the platform's maze of confusing panels and settings.

6. WordPress's terminology is needlessly confusing. The way it mixes up website settings, templates, pages, posts, and patterns creates real learning barriers. Understanding how these concepts interconnect within the admin interface takes considerable time.

Given all this, WordPress's dominance is remarkable - it powers over 40% of all websites globally. What's the reason?

I believe there's a single, compelling explanation: WordPress leveraged the ideal technology stack at precisely the right moment: PHP and MySQL. From 2003 through 2015, PHP reigned as the dominant programming language, and developers enthusiastically created countless frameworks and libraries for it. WordPress capitalized on this momentum perfectly. Thousands of developers and businesses contributed to its ecosystem—core development, themes, and plugins - because they were already proficient in the underlying technology.

Since 2015, JavaScript frameworks have taken the lead in web development. Yet this shift hasn't triggered a new content management system battle. The CMS wars seemingly concluded around 2015. WordPress emerged victorious, and no one has mounted a serious challenge since.

Bottom line

WordPress's success story is a fascinating paradox. Despite its technical shortcomings—bloated code, security vulnerabilities, performance issues, and a steep learning curve - it remains the undisputed leader in content management systems. 

This teaches us an important lesson about technology adoption: being in the right place at the right time with the right technology stack can matter more than technical perfection. WordPress didn't win because it was the best - it won because it was accessible to the massive community of PHP developers who were already building the web in the 2000s and early 2010s.

Today, WordPress benefits from powerful network effects. Its enormous ecosystem of themes, plugins, developers, and tutorials creates a self-reinforcing cycle that's nearly impossible for competitors to break. Even with modern JavaScript frameworks offering superior alternatives, the inertia is too strong.

So while I may continue to grapple with WordPress's limitations every day, I can't deny its achievement. Sometimes in technology, timing and community matter more than technical elegance. WordPress proved that - and the web we know today is built on that foundation, for better or worse.

Here it is. My first (and probably last) WordPress plugin. Developing WordPress plugins is extremely time consuming and hard. But I can live with the result.

Tired of complicated website builders and long hours of coding? Good news! The future of website creation is here, and it's faster than you think. Imagine a complete, functional website, ready in just a few seconds. Yes, really!

This new tool shows just how powerful the combination of a smart 'prompt' and an AI model like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok can be. The concept is surprisingly simple: you type a few instructions, the app generates a structured JSON output, and you copy and paste it into your favorite AI tool. And just like that, before you can blink, you have a basic yet feature-rich website.

Some examples made with Lovable and Bolt:

• https://vital-community-web.lovable.app/ 
• https://vital-life-harmony.lovable.app/ 
• https://world-wanderlust-studio.lovable.app
• https://the-world-discovered-cno1.bolt.host
• https://creative-souls-respo-ccf0.bolt.host
• https://financial-freedom-co-cz2h.bolt.host/
• https://discover-dash-travel.lovable.app
• https://vital-life-complete-lyyt.bolt.host/
• https://wanderlust-wizard-21.lovable.app/
• https://vital-life-complete-ehxc.bolt.host/
• https://dream-properties-aa076abe.base44.app
• https://coffee-corner-respon-7xl2.bolt.host/

What makes this approach so special is its speed. You get instant results. The AI understands the context of your text and builds a logical site, complete with titles, sections, and paragraphs. It even takes search engine optimization (SEO) into account, as the AI incorporates relevant keywords and metadata into the code.

So whether you want to start a blog, showcase a small business, or just experiment with AI, this app makes it all much easier and more fun. It’s the perfect way to harness the power of AI and get online in a flash!

Tonight my 4-week free trial of Google’s Gemini Pro 2.5 ends. And nope, I’m not renewing. For now, no paid GenAI subscription for me.

The past weeks have been a wild ride. In just a short time I built my very first Flask (Python) web apps, my first React apps with NodeJS, and even a full PHP application — something I’d been wanting to do for ages.

But that was only the start. I also discovered how insanely good GenAI is at JavaScript. Think crazy Canvas animations, websites loaded with bells and whistles… you name it, I built it.

And then there’s the writing… wow. GenAI is unbelievably good at interpreting and creating text. Over the past few days I had it generate more than 50 pages of teaching material — complete with assignments, tips, and solid didactic structure. Like having a turbo-professor and bestselling author rolled into one.

And yet… I’m not signing up. GenAI feels like it belongs to the younger generation, let’s say under 30. They’re the ones who will build things that completely reshape publishing, design, and development. Just like I once stormed the web as an eager thirty-something, it’s their turn now.

Our generation (50+) is used to stable, complex systems with big ecosystems and real human developers and communities. That’s going to fade. Websites, apps, content in general: it’ll all become disposable. I still have clients who’ve been running the same site for over 10 years and they’re perfectly happy with it. But with GenAI’s speed, that kind of longevity won’t last. Everything will pop up faster, disappear faster… rinse and repeat.

One example. Generative AI really struggles with coding for WordPress. Whether it's themes, plugins, or custom blocks, GenAI makes a ton of mistakes. The WordPress ecosystem is just too big and complex for it to handle, and honestly, it probably never will be able to. It's way easier for it to whip up a slick little JavaScript or React app than to create a secure, functioning WordPress theme or plugin that has to pass all those tests.

And honestly? I don’t need to keep up anymore. My time has been. Now it’s time to be a rockstar again. Or as Cody Johnson sings: “If you got a dream, chase it, because a dream won’t chase you back.” And he’s absolutely right.

I tested the exact same prompt across nine GenAI engines. Here’s the lineup:​

• Claude
• Grok
• Copilot
• Gemini
• Perplexity
• ChatGPT
• DeepSeek
• Lovable
• Bolt

The verdict

Lovable is loveable. Bolt had a lot of issues that needed tweaking. App builders like Lovable and Bolt create React applications that need to be built in order to get the HTML/CSS and JS files. These websites are actually more like apps, fully relying on JavaScript. It's probably an overkill for an average website, but very powerful when creating interactive web applications. Just to make things clear: Lovable and Bolt use GPT-5 in the back! So we're kind of comparing apples with oranges.

ChatGPT-5 is the best coding assistant today. It nailed every requirement on the very first try—no glitches, no extra steps. Even better, it delivered a complete zip file with all files and folders ready to go.

Gemini, Grok and Claude performed reasonably well but forced me to manually create the project structure.

Perplexity demanded lots of fine-tuning and tweaking. It used a jQuery lightbox-plugin without referencing jQuery in the code.

Deepseek had a very hard time. DeepSeek constantly throw me a "Server busy, please try again later"-error. But it finally came through. DeepSeek's attempt shows a lot of issues though.

And Copilot? It basically stalled - making it useless for coding tasks of this kind.

Conclusion

As an experienced developer, I don't rely on AI app or website builders like Lovable and Bolt, since I can handle hosting, testing, and security myself. However, for newcomers, these tools can be quite helpful—though you'll still need to know how to trace and report bugs, because let's face it, there are plenty of them.

That said, even seasoned developers can't match the speed at which advanced GenAI tools like GPT-5 and Gemini can churn out websites and web applications. The more refined your prompt, the more impressive the output. This holds true for all GenAI coding assistants.

One thing's clear: a new era is unfolding. In the near future, AI-generated websites, web apps, and standalone applications will become the norm, regardless of whether they are built by experienced developers. As a user, you won’t be able to tell the difference between something generated by AI or handcoded.

Right now however, in 2025, GenAI code generators just aren’t in the same league as big developer ecosystems like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. Those communities of real people are still way ahead, building frameworks that are far more solid than anything AI can spit out today. But who knows what the next five or ten years will bring? Maybe by then, GenAI will be able to whip up software that completely outshines WordPress and its thousands of themes and plugins. Or maybe not. It all depends on where GenAI companies decide to put their energy. Will they chase image, sound, and video generation? Or will they double down on creating powerful business applications that change the game? My bet is that GenAI will go wherever the money leads.

Remember the HTML5 Canvas? A few years back, I was obsessed with it. It was the heir to Flash, perfect for in-browser games and animations. I even ran a whole website about it!

Fast forward to today. I got curious and decided to see if a modern AI could handle making Canvas animations. My reaction? I was floored. I honestly couldn't believe what these tools can come up with after a single prompt.

Within seconds, it generated these fully functional animations:

• A playable Country Quiz

• A beautiful interactive Particle System

• An animated map of Temperatures in Europe

The process is ridiculously simple. You write one sentence describing what you want, and the AI spits out a complete HTML file with all the JavaScript you need. No debugging, no boilerplate - just copy, paste, and run.

This is huge. Think about how much a small animation can improve a website. It can make a site feel more alive, explain a concept visually, or just add a touch of "wow." It turns a boring page into a memorable experience.

The sky is the limit - or rather, your imagination is. These AI tools are making it easier than ever to build a more beautiful and interactive web.

I recently discoverd Quill.js (https://quilljs.com/), a powerful rich text editor for the web. In its most basic mode, ASP developers can use it like here.

Live example: https://quickersite.com/ai/quill/gemini/

If you need more whistles and bells: https://quickersite.com/ai/quill/gemini_full/

Quill is developed and maintained by Slab. It is permissively licensed under BSD. You can use it freely in personal or commercial projects!