Hands-on with the Famo.us JavaScript framework [Video]

Take a guided tour of the fast and flashy JavaScript framework that promises to reinvent the Web

Credit: Bigc Studio / Shutterstock

Famo.us is an open source JavaScript framework for building high-performance mobile Web and hybrid mobile apps. The framework gets its speed and sizzle by replacing the browser’s slow, DOM-based rendering mechanism with its own rendering engine and by tapping the GPU acceleration provided by CSS3’s 3D transformation functions — no plug-ins or native code required.

In the lore of Famo.us, the origin of the framework was the original team’s struggle with HTML5, CSS3, and the DOM (Document Object Model). According to architect Dave Valdman, writing on the Famo.us site, “We wondered if we could move a square <div>at 60 FPS entirely in JavaScript without relying on CSS3 keyframe animations… then we built a framework around it.” Valdman now adds one comment to that for context: “Animation is our humble roots, but our library …