Animation

Animations are everywhere on the Web today, but it wasn't always like this. A few years ago, we had to use awkward "server-push" techniques to achieve movement on a web page. Now, we have GIF animations, Java, Shockwave, and a million other formats. In this section we'll be dealing with GIF animation, which is relatively easy to do.

If you have a newer browser (Netscape 2 or newer) you should see 'Bot rapidly spinning on either side of this paragraph. If you feel yourself getting queasy, repeatedly click your browser's "STOP" button until 'Bot quits his antics.
How does one go about creating an Animated GIF? The first step is to create (using your graphics package) each frame of your animation. 'Bot is composed of 8 frames, looping continually. The more frames you have, the larger the file size is and the smoother the animation appears.

Next, use a program to combine the frames together. On the Mac, you can use GIFBuilder. On Windows, you can use Alchemy's GIF Construction Set. Each program operates in a different manner, but a good package will allow you to:
Remember, you can use a maximum of 256 colors for the entire animated GIF.


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