Facebook makes tool behind animations iOS app Paper open source

Facebook is making the tool that controls animations in its iOS app Paper open source. The source code is on GitHub. Paper relies heavily on its animations and graphics to offer a different type of app than Facebook’s default app.

The tool called Pop uses dynamic animations instead of standard static animations, The Next Web writes. With Pop, developers can reuse the animations that Facebook uses in Paper. The animations in apps can be called up with the api.

Although Facebook first used Pop in Paper, the framework has been in development for several years and the developers claim it is mature. The Pop framework, which is suitable for both iOS and OS X, is licensed under BSD and available on GitHub.

Facebook released the Paper iOS app a few months ago as an alternative to the regular Facebook app, especially for discovering articles worth reading. Paper shares a lot of functionality with the regular Facebook app, such as notifications, messages and the timeline.

It is not the first time that Facebook has made its own tool open source. Previously, for example, this happened with its own PHP-based programming language.