This page will explain how I did the animated background for the index page.
But I haven’t written it properly yet.
Sorry.
Weeks later and I still haven't written this page and I am getting hits on it already.
So here's a start. I want to include examples and links, but that will have to wait.
To make a background like this first make a big blank GIF image. About 1200 x 1000.
You can colour this if you like.
next make a very simple image way up in the top left corner. This is the image that you will use to make the animation. It should be only about 10% of the width of the full "screen". The reason for doing it like this is that the background gets tiled on the screen, so you want to make sure that there is only one tile. You might find you need something bigger than 1200 x 1000 to make sure this doesn't happen, but this will make the whole finished bizo a much bigger file, and small is definitely better.
Then you make a whole animation by building new separate files out of the one you have just created. So you now have fig1.gif, fig2.gif, fig3.gif etc etc. Best if you can repeat as much stuff as possible, and move as little stuff as possible and at the same time, keep the whole show down to 5 or 6 frames if possible. This is an exercise in making the biggest impression out of the fewest elements.
Each frame should be less than 20k as a gif, or you will be in trouble later. Just one important point. From now on, you can't change the composition of any one of the frames. You may have to come back and make new ones... fig3a.gif, fig3b.gif etc. So plan for this by having some method of cut and paste sorted out for convenient changes.
Now you need to get some software that you can use to string your frames together and compress the result to a single animated GIF. If you don't have anything for this, you will be able to get something for 14 day trial. I have used software from coffeecup.com and from Jasc.com . Both did an adequate job.
You can use this software to make a short clip from your frames, and to adjust the time for each frame, rate of replay, number of replays etc. Also, to compress the clip file to a smaller size.
It is important to get the smallest file that you can. The one on this page is 28KB, compressed from over 100KB. But the highest level of compression may not run properly on some browsers. The most common problem is that the browser does not erase the frame completely before displaying the next frame. This might be a feature you can actually use for special effect. You just have to experiment.
If you can get this to work first time you are doing really well. It took me many trials to just this one to work.
Another problem is that it is not easy to check how the new creation will work. It will run differently with different software. There is really only one way to be sure. That’s in the final way you plan to use it.
So, you then just include it in the html for your site as your background file.
for example (this page) . . . . background="./rranimturn4.gif"
Good Luck, Brian
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