Facebook Makes The Animation Library Behind Paper Open Source

The animation generator behind Facebook’s Paper will now be available as open source for mobile developers.

When Facebook introduced its minimal, news-focused mobile app Paper in February — the first product out of the social network’s Creative Labs — one of its standout features was the smooth, card-based animations that accompanied every swipe. The company plans to announce today that the animation engine behind Paper, Pop, will be available to developers as an open source tool.

“With Pop, we are able to keep the familiar and powerful programming model of Core Animation while also capturing a gesture’s velocity and better reflecting user intent,” said Kimon Tsinteris, Facebook engineer and original founder of Push Pop Press before it was acquired in 2011, said in a blog post. “Paper has given us the opportunity to further refine both that vision and the animation engine behind it.”