Presenting Mathematical Concepts on the World Wide Web
Animations on the Web
This is an advanced topic (yes, even more than some of the others
we have covered!). If you are not yet comfortable working with still
images, or with any other previous topic,
go back
and keep working on
that. You can safely skip this topic. If you really want to include
animations, however, do proceed...
An animation is a collection of related still images, or "frames",
that are displayed sequentially, giving the illusion of motion, much
like a hand-held flip movie, a movie in a theater, or the pictures
on your television (though the latter two use many more frames than a
typical computer animation).
Animations on the web come in a variety of forms, some that require
external viewers, and some that play in-place on an HTML page. Not
all browsers can handle the in-line animations, and not all users have
external viewers for all formats. Some formats can be viewed in-line
by obtaining the proper plug-ins.
In order to make an animation for the web, you will need to be able to
generate frames.
Formats:
(I recommend you start out actually trying the couple nearest the top;
the others are mostly for reference, for later on...)
Some Useful Resources:
Your Assignment
It's the usual one, but this time it's optional. As I said at the top
of this page, use this if you want it. But spend your time making
progress on the more basic techniques first, and only add this if you
really need it and have the time and comfort-level to do so.
Next Page:
Generating Frames
Next Topic: The Basics of Forms & Scripts
Last Topic: Still Images
Presenting Mathematical Concepts on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 1997 by
Carol Scheftic.
All rights reserved.
(This section was originally copyrighted in 1996 by
The Geometry Center
and is re-used here with permission.)
Please send comments on this page,
or requests for permission to re-use material from this page, to:
scheftic@geom.umn.edu
Page established 1-Jun-97;
last updated Saturday, 26-Jul-1997 20:15:02 CDT.