Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Animista VS Pattern Lab

Compare Animista VS Pattern Lab and see what are their differences

Animista logo Animista

Create beautiful CSS animations in your browser

Pattern Lab logo Pattern Lab

Create atomic design systems with Pattern Lab.
  • Animista Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-01-29
  • Pattern Lab Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-20

Animista features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Animista features an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface, making it simple for users of all skill levels to create and customize CSS animations.
  • Variety of Animation Options
    The platform offers a wide range of pre-built animations, allowing users to explore and select from various styles and effects for their projects.
  • Real-Time Preview
    Users can see real-time previews of the animations as they customize them, which helps in making quick and informed adjustments.
  • Quick Export
    Animista provides an easy way to generate and export the CSS code for the animations, streamlining the development process.
  • Customization Controls
    The platform allows users to modify the duration, delay, and other properties of the animations, offering a high level of customization.

Possible disadvantages of Animista

  • Limited to CSS
    Animista focuses purely on CSS animations, which may not cover all animation needs, especially those requiring JavaScript or other more advanced techniques.
  • No Project Save Feature
    There is no inherent feature to save projects or settings within the tool, which means users have to reconfigure settings if they navigate away or close the browser.
  • Lack of Advanced Animation Features
    While the tool offers a variety of basic and intermediate animations, it may fall short for users needing highly complex or intricate animation sequences.
  • Dependency on Internet Connection
    Animista is an online tool, so a stable internet connection is required to use it. This might be a limitation for users with unreliable internet access.
  • Potential Overhead
    Adding multiple animations generated from Animista might increase the CSS file size, potentially impacting website performance if not managed properly.

Pattern Lab features and specs

  • Component-Driven Development
    Pattern Lab encourages a modular approach by allowing developers to create reusable components, which promotes consistency and efficiency in developing user interfaces.
  • Atomic Design
    It is built on the Atomic Design methodology, which helps in designing systems by breaking down interfaces into basic building blocks, leading to more manageable and scalable design systems.
  • Live Style Guide
    Pattern Lab generates a live style guide that updates in real time as components are developed, making it easy for designers and developers to stay in sync with the design system.
  • Platform Agnostic
    Pattern Lab can be integrated with various development stacks and workflows, making it flexible and adaptable to a wide range of projects.
  • Enhanced Collaboration
    By facilitating a shared language and set of tools between designers and developers, Pattern Lab improves collaboration and reduces communication barriers.

Possible disadvantages of Pattern Lab

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For teams that are new to the Atomic Design methodology or to Pattern Lab itself, there can be a significant learning curve required to get up to speed.
  • Initial Setup Complexity
    Setting up a project can be complex, especially for beginners, as it requires understanding both the tool and the underlying design principles thoroughly.
  • Limited Customization
    Although flexible, Pattern Lab does have limitations in terms of customizations, which may not be suitable for very specific or unique project requirements.
  • Performance Overheads
    As projects grow in size and complexity, managing and compiling a large number of components can lead to performance overheads, affecting build times.
  • Maintenance Burden
    Keeping the Pattern Lab and its components in sync with the ongoing changes in projects can become a maintenance burden over time, requiring dedicated resources.

Animista videos

CSS Animations with Animista: Tool School 003

More videos:

  • Review - Creating easy CSS Animations in Muse with Animista

Pattern Lab videos

Introduction to Pattern Lab

More videos:

  • Review - Using Pattern Lab to Design More Efficiently

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Animista and Pattern Lab)
Design Tools
82 82%
18% 18
Developer Tools
79 79%
21% 21
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0
React
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Animista should be more popular than Pattern Lab. It has been mentiond 22 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Animista mentions (22)

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Pattern Lab mentions (6)

  • Unlocking the frontend – a call for standardizing component APIs pt.2
    While this helped ease integration work, in parallel to that we also started exploring more systematic approaches on the frontend side itself. With the advent of Brad Frost Atomic Design, and tools like Pattern Lab, we started using a more component-centric approach. This included colocating all styling (CSS), behavior (JavaScript) and semantic structure (HTML) for a component, and way better encapsulation as a... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Atomic Design: A Methodology for Building Design Systems
    In order to apply this methodology in your work, you can use a tool called Pattern Lab, created by Brad Frost and Dave Olsen. Pattern Lab is a tool to create atomic design systems. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Integrating Accessibility In The Web Development Process
    Something that would really help to work with tested components and stay consistent with the code and guarantee code quality would be a component library created with Storybook or Pattern Lab, for example. Developers who have a high level of knowledge of how to write accessible code can create components and test them before implementing them. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • How do you make the styling of the site flexible to fast change, but not tedious to actually go in and change every single detail?
    You can read more about Atomic Design Systems and how it scales. I've used Patternlab and I find it awesome. Source: over 3 years ago
  • fractal.build as an atomic design tool
    Fractal seemed easier, at least to me, to understand and maintain, than PatternLab, which I failed to install due a bug in the current installer (and when I managed to install the grunt version, I was already told that there is fractal as a possible alternative). - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Animista and Pattern Lab, you can also consider the following products

Animate.css - Animate.css is a cross-browser library of CSS animations.

Storybook - Storybook is an open source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, and Angular. It makes building stunning UIs organized and efficient.

Keyframes.app - A timeline editor for CSS animations

Swanky Docs - A simple, flexible and powerful ecosystem for creating beautiful documentation.

Anime.js - Lightweight JavaScript animation library

Backlight - Backlight is a unique collaborative platform to build Design Systems code-side.📐 Design tokens🧩 Component code and stories📖 Documentation site📦 Managed release to npmEverything in one place, in a true collaborative workspace.Try 👉 backlight.dev