FAQS

GSAP itself is pure JavaScript and should work in virtually ALL browsers. GSAP wasn’t intended to solve all browser incompatibilities, but it does implement wizardry for critical features like opacity, transforms (rotation, scaleX, scaleY, skewX, skewY, x, and y), and transformOrigin so those should work in all major browsers even back to IE6. Firefox doesn’t support backgroundPositionX or backgroundPositionY, so those specific properties won’t work but backgroundPosition will for virtually all browsers. There is NOT a predetermined list of css properties that you can tween – the platform will attempt to tween ANY property you pass in. If it is numeric, it will tween it. If it isn’t numeric and it isn’t a recognized special property, CSSPlugin will just set the property to the value you provide (without tweening it). So, for example, if you try to tween to display:"inline", that isn’t a tweenable property but it will still be set accordingly during the tween, so feel free to use that to your advantage.

The only dependency is on GreenSock's core. There are no dependencies on jQuery or any other libraries, although they work great together.

Yes, Draggable is just for DOM elements. But the real magic behind all the fluid motion and snapping is InertiaPlugin, and that can be used to tween any property of any object, not just DOM elements. So yes, you can absolutely get this kind of motion in other contexts but you'd need to wire up the actual dragging logic yourself and then fire off an InertiaPlugin tween when the user releases their mouse/touch. InertiaPlugin can even track the velocity of any property for you too (even function-based getters/setters!), so it's quite a powerful tool.

Pretty much every major browser is supported including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, iOS, Android and IE even back to version 9! We're not aware of any significant browsers that don't work, but please let us know if you stumble across an issue.

IntertiaPlugin is a membership benefit of Club GreenSock, so you need to sign up to get that. Draggable, however, is included in all the standard downloads and you don't need a membership to get that; Draggable can be used apart from InertiaPlugin as long as you don't need the momentum-based motion. GreenSock's standard license allows you to use GreenSock tools for free in everything except a very specific type of commercial project (if you collect a fee from multiple customers for the app/product/game/site that uses GreenSock tools) which makes it extremely accessible and business-friendly while providing a small funding mechanism to sustain ongoing support, enhancement, and innovation. The web is littered with abandoned “open source” projects, but GreenSock has a years-long track record of commitment to the platform. This unique licensing model is a key component of its sustainability. If you charge multiple customers a usage/access/license fee, please simply sign up for a “Business Green” Club GreenSock membership which comes with a special commercial license granting you permission to do so. Click here for details. Joining the club also gets you members-only bonus plugins, utilities, update notifications, and more.

CSS3 transitions have some significant limitations that make them unworkable for a serious animation platform. They don’t provide precise controls over the timing or easing. They’re great for simple effects but the GreenSock Animation Platform delivers extremely precise rendering, so you can do things like pause() and reverse() an animation anytime or skip to a specific time and play from there, etc. Try creating a CSS3 transition that uses an elastic.out or slow motion ease and then jump to 0.72494-seconds into a 2-second transition and pause() only to resume() later. It’s impossible from what I understand. So no, the platform doesn’t make use of CSS3 transitions. However, it is highly optimized for performance. See the detailed cage match where GSAP battles CSS3 transitions where there’s a detailed comparison in several categories.

No need to worry. Tweens and timelines are automatically made eligible for garbage collection (gc) when appropriate (typically when they finish but if you maintain a reference to an instance so that you can restart it later, for example, it won’t be gc’d out from under you). Basically the system manages gc for you and generally cleans up after itself.

LoaderMax is included in the main AS3 GreenSock download zip.

The first parameter of the various loaders (ImageLoader, XMLLoader, SWFLoader, MP3Loader, etc.) accepts either a simple String URL or a URLRequest. So if you want to pass data to the server, simply construct a URLRequest accordingly, like:

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://www.yourDomain.com/whatever.php");
var data:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
data.exampleSessionId = new Date().getTime();
data.exampleUserLabel = "label1";
request.data = data;
request.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
var loader:ImageLoader = new ImageLoader(request, {name:"image1"});

Yes.