Oh, so you've seen cool websites with animations moving all over
the place? You've seen balls bouncing, finger's pointing, women
dancing and lots of other pictures moving on the screen while
you surf. And now you want to make your own homepage or website
come alive and move!
Cool. What you want is animated GIFs. A GIF is an image format
which supports extremely good compression and looks very clear
and sharp. In 1989, a standards committee added the ability to
include multiple frames (images) within a single GIF file. This
standard became known as GIF89a. It's incredibly powerful as you
can create some awesome effects without the learning curve
associated with Java or Dynamic HTML. In addition, virtually all
browsers support GIFs in all forms, while Java and Dynamic HTML
support is sometimes lacking or turned of by the user (animation
can also be turned off by the user, but at least the unanimated
version shows up in that case).
A good product to get if you want to do animation in this manner
is Ulead's GIF Animator. Another excellent animation tool is
Animation Shop from Jasc (the same folks who sell Paint Shop
Pro). These products are both inexpensive and easy to use.
There are also many collections of animated GIFs available all
over the place if you are not up to the task of creating your
own, or if you just want to give a cool beating heart or
something like that.
To create an animated GIF just use a GIF editor like GIF
Animator, then include it in your web page just like any other
animation. Nothing else needs to be done. One of the great
advantages of GIF89a is that no plug in is required and your
visitors do not need to download anything to make them work.
Unless you have a really old browser, support is just built in.
But remember, please, that most visitors to your site don't want
to see a whole lot of animations. Most people find looking at
bouncing balls, dancing girls, juggling pineapples and spinning
clocks to be incredibly annoying. Having a lot of animation is a
good way to get your visitors to become ex-visitors.
Also, GIF89a files tend to be large, so again you want to be
careful what you include. A good rule of thumb is no more than
one or two small animations on a page and only when necessary.
And be sure to make most of your animations non-looping, meaning
they stop when they've gone through all of the frames.
GIF animation is rarely essential for a web site to work
properly. Think through if you really need it before you put
hundreds of animations on a single page. A small bouncing sign
that says "buy me" is good in the right conditions, but a dozen
blinking, spinning, twirling banners virtually always causes me
to hit that old back button right away.
About the author:
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets.
This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your
internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge. Web Site Address:
http://www.internet-tips.net Weekly newsletter:
http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm Daily Tips:
mailto:internet-tips@GetResponse.com
