Even assuming JS that was originally meant for hover effects (or "rollover") and other "light animation", complex web applications predate React by a lot.
Think Outlook Web, Google Maps, and all the smaller apps built with frameworks of their time such as Dojo, YUI etc
There also are monstrosities with the server at the center...
applications with hundreds of hidden form fields per page, required server sessions for anonymous users, DSLs in half-baked server-side templating languages, server code generating and injecting opaque JS to sync state with the client, the list goes on.
And these things all have ups and downs themselves I guess, just like React has.
In fact animation is one of my least favorite uses of JS, the more I can do in CSS, the better.
As a user sometimes I enjoy complex animations but only when it serves a purpose.
Think Outlook Web, Google Maps, and all the smaller apps built with frameworks of their time such as Dojo, YUI etc
There also are monstrosities with the server at the center...
applications with hundreds of hidden form fields per page, required server sessions for anonymous users, DSLs in half-baked server-side templating languages, server code generating and injecting opaque JS to sync state with the client, the list goes on.
And these things all have ups and downs themselves I guess, just like React has.
In fact animation is one of my least favorite uses of JS, the more I can do in CSS, the better.
As a user sometimes I enjoy complex animations but only when it serves a purpose.