Framer (github) is a modern prototyping tool. More concretely, it’s a lightweight Javacript based framework for creating and prototyping complex interactions (with animations) on various mobile devices. I haven’t tried it on a mobile device yet, but in Chrome at least (doesn’t work in the Firefox browser), the transition and animations do look pretty smooth as the author claims to rely on the GPU directly. So if performance matters to you and you’re up for some transition prototyping fun, why not give this opensource tool a try.

In Koen’s own words:

Many people already prototype in the browser. It’s simple and quick. But while html/js/css/jquery gets a lot done it has some downsides:

• It can get pretty complicated mixing all the different technologies
• It can be hard to get the pixel perfect control you want
• It’s not always performant, especially on mobile
• It’s pretty far from how it will be actually implemented if you prototype for native

Framer tries to solve some of these problems by providing a very lightweight framework modeled after larger application frameworks. The basic idea is that you only need a few simple building blocks like images, animation and events to build and test complex interactions.

Credits: Koen Bok

Tags: HTML, opensource, prototype
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