React Typist

React Component for making typing animations. Wrap Typist around your text or any element tree to animate text inside the tree. Easily stylable and highly configurable.

Install

npm install react-typist --save

Live Example

• Basic example

Basic Usage

CommonJS Module (using webpack or browserify):

import React, {Component} from 'react';
import Typist from 'react-typist';

export default class MyComponent extends Component {

  render() {
    return (
      <Typist>
        Animate this text.
      </Typist>;
    );
  }
}

UMD module:

Include dist/standalone/Typist.js into your build, using whatever build tool or manually entering a <script> tag.

CSS

Typist contains a simple CSS file to make the cursor at the end of the text blink. To include it, you must include dist/Typist.css in your build.

Children

Typist will animate any text present in its descendents. Each text node will be animated as it is encountered in depth-first traversal of the children tree, one after the other.

Typist can take as children any valid node that can be rendered in a React application, i.e. it could be undefined, null, a boolean, a number, a string, a React element, or an array of any of those types recursively.

This also implies that you are free to pass any props to the children of Typist, including your own css classes (as in any React application). This allows you to easily style your text inside Typist:

<Typist>
  <span className="my-custom-class"> First Sentence </span>
  <br />
  <div className="container">
    <p> This will be animated after first sentence is complete </p>
    <MyComponent prop1="val1"> More text. </MyComponent>
  </div>
  Final sentence
</Typist>

Refer to examples/ for more examples.

Typist.Delay

In order to insert delays into your animation, you can use the Typist.Delay Component:

<Typist>
  <p> First Sentence </p>
  <Typist.Delay ms={500} />
  <br />
  This won't be animated until 500ms after the first sentenced is rendered
</Typist>

Refer to examples/ for more examples.

Typist.Delay Props

• ms

ms

Required

Milliseconds to apply for the delay

Typist.Backspace

Typist also supports backspace animations via the Typist.Backspace Component:

<Typist>
  <span> First Sentence </span>
  <Typist.Backspace count={8} delay={200} />
  <span> Phrase </span>
</Typist>

Refer to examples/ for more examples.

Typist.Backspace Props

• count
• delay

count

Default: 1

Number of characters to backspace

delay

Default: 0

Delay in milliseconds before the backspace animation starts

Typist Props

• className
• avgTypingDelay
• stdTypingDelay
• startDelay
• cursor
• onCharacterTyped
• onLineTyped
• onTypingDone
• delayGenerator

className

Default: null

CSS class name to be applied to the Typist root node. Typist will always have the CSS class Typist applied to it.

<Typist className="MyTypist"> Animate this text. </Typist>

will produce:

<div class="Typist MyTypist"> Animate this text. </div>

avgTypingDelay

Default: 70

Average typing delay in milliseconds between every keystroke of the typing animation (Less is faster). The distribution of the typing delays between strokes is not uniform, to make the animation more human like.

stdTypingDelay

Default: 25

Standard deviation of typing delay between keystrokes of the typing animation. (Less means more uniform, i.e. less variance between values).

startDelay

Default: 0

Milliseconds before typing animation begins.

cursor

Default:

{
  show: true,
  blink: true,
  element: '|',
  hideWhenDone: false,
  hideWhenDoneDelay: 1000,
}

Object containing options for cursor:

• show (bool): whether to display cursor at the end of text.
• blink (bool): whether to add blinking animation to cursor. You must also include the css
• element (string): character to use for the cursor
• hideWhenDone (bool): whether the cursor should be hidden after tyiping animation is complete.
• hideWhenDoneDelay (int): delay in ms to be applied before hiding cursor when typing animation is complete.

onCharacterTyped

Function to be called every time a character is typed on the screen.

function(character, charIdx) {
  ...
}

onLineTyped

Function to be called every time a line is typed on the screen.

function(line, lineIdx) {
  ...
}

onTypingDone

Function to be called when typing animation is complete.

delayGenerator

Default: gaussianDistribution

Function to be called to generate the typing delay (in ms) for every keystroke of the animation. Every time this function is called it should return a value in milliseconds. This function can be used to provide your own typing delay distribution, for example uniform (e.g. always 100ms), or a deterministic distribution.

However, if you wish to insert delays at specific points in the animation, consider useing the Delay Component instead.

function(mean, std, current = {line, lineIdx, character, charIdx, defDelayGenerator}) {
  ...
}

• mean (number): Average typing delay. Will be the value of props.avgTypingDelay
• std (number): Standard deviation of typing delay. Will be the value of props.stdTypingDelay
• current.line (string): Value of line of text (Typist child) currently being animated.
• current.lineIdx (int): Index of line of text (Typist child) currently being animated.
• current.character (string): Value of character that was just rendered.
• current.charIdx (int): Index of character that was just rendered.
• current.defDelayGenerator (function): Reference to default delay generator function to be able to fall back to.

This function can also be used to introduce delays at specific points in the typing animation.

e.g.:

function(mean, std, {line, lineIdx, charIdx, defDelayGenerator}) {
  // Delay the animation for 2 seconds at the last character of the first line
  if (lineIdx === 0 && charIdx === line.length - 1) {
    return 2000;
  }
  return defDelayGenerator();
}

Troubleshooting

Internet Explorer Compatibility

React Typist makes use of Array.from() which is not supported in IE.

SCRIPT438: Object doesn't support property or method 'from' Typist.js (449,1)

To resolve this, babel-polyfill can be added to your project.

npm install --save babel-polyfill

You can now include this module in your app at the entry point.

ES6:

import 'babel-polyfill'

CommonJS:

require('babel-polyfill')

Development

To build the examples and start the dev server, run:

npm start

Now, open http://localhost:8080 and start hacking!

If you just want to build the examples, run:

npm run examples

Running Tests

npm test

License

MIT