I was exploring the current state of Web Animation over the weekend.
CSS vs JS Animation
Old school jQuery animations seems to be a no-no… either use CSS3 animations or a library like GSAP or Velocity.js
This is because just jQuery can be very jittery, it doesn’t hardware accelerate like CSS3 and the JS animation libs.
For CSS3 animations you can use Transit which takes care of the CSS for you.
Current State
GSAP seems to be king for hard-core Web Animation. It’s not free however, but seems super powerful.
Velocity.js should be checked out as well.
jQuery.Transit for CSS3 animations via js.
Prediction
As Rachel was saying in her post, accessibility is a concern. I’m not sure what vestibular disorders is. Seems like crazy motion sickness?
I think animations in web-apps would be low-key… kind of like little moments of joy… all nice apps will properly have these micro-interactions UX.
Animations will be pretty prolific in Web-Design, maybe not in the accessibility mega-brands, but everywhere else.
Prerequisite
Web design sure has come a long way. You remember how ugly things were back then?
Do you remember Table Layouts? My gosh.
I would think to really use Web Animations, perhaps you either gotta follow good design guidelines like Material Design, IBM, or Salesforce. Or gotta learn design. Color theory etc.
Also be a CSS wizard, and Adobe X ninja.