Building a React portfolio website with Locomotive Scroll

Locomotive Scroll is a React library that enhances user experience on web applications by offering advanced scrolling animations like smooth scrolling, animated page overlays, and parallax effects, which are increasingly popular due to the capabilities of modern devices. The library builds on ayamflow's virtual-scroll and introduces HTML data attributes to customize scrolling behavior, allowing developers to create floating contents, sticky scrolls, and even scrolling classes for custom animations. While Locomotive Scroll can significantly improve the aesthetics and fluidity of web pages, especially for sites related to storytelling or visual-heavy industries like cinema or art, it employs scroll jacking—a controversial technique that alters the default scrolling behavior, potentially affecting usability and accessibility. Comparatively, react-scroll is another library that focuses more on vertical scrolling animations and is widely used for its ease of integration and predefined smooth scrolling options. The choice between these libraries depends on the specific needs of the web application and the desired balance between animation sophistication and user experience.