Animated Graphics

We're not going to go into much detail here, but are simply going to point out some possibilities.

It is possible to include sound and video clips in your pages but, in order for people using your pages to see/hear them, then they would need to have additional software installed on their machine. No doubt this is an area which will develop as systems improve but you can't assume that your viewers will have - or even want - the necessary software. Also the download speed of, say, video clips is a barrier right now.

We've said before that there are still plenty of users who simply don't want to wait for all-singing-and-dancing pages to load so you should think carefully before you go down this route unless it is particularly essential and for a specific purpose.

As far as smaller animated graphics go, there are really two choices. One is to learn a little bit of Javascript and include an applet in your page code - not something that we can develop here - or, secondly, you can get software which you can use to make an 'animated' .GIF file. This is really several separate image files which, in the best tradition of cartoons, are combined into a single .GIF file so that each image is displayed in turn to give the appearance of movement. These are quite widely used and, if they're not too intrusive, can be quite effective.

Here's an example which uses these eight separate, and slightly different, images:
 

• create the following document and view it to see what happens
   

The image file bikemove.gif is a file made by software which combines the eight separate images and displays each one in turn for just a short time to give the impression of movement.

Some examples are of relevant software are mentioned in the 'resources' section.