From the early days of the web, when the only thing that moved on your screen was the mouse cursor to nowadays where there's now a bewildering array of methods for animating pages. Here's a just a small selection:

Java^{(TM) -}  is a relatively new programming language that was invented by Sun Microsystems. It is an object-oriented  platform essentially based on existing programming languages - especially C++. It enables internet users to participate in interactive multimedia features like animation and calculation. Using small Java programs, called Applets, Web pages can include multimedia features.

Shockwave, Flash - Macromedia's Shockwave plug-ins and Flash are leaders in plug-in animation. Shockwave is a technology developed by Macromedia, Inc, that allows the user to view Web pages with multimedia objects. Macromedia Shockwave is for the creation and playback of fully interactive multimedia on the World Wide Web and corporate intranets. Shockwave supports audio, animation, video and processes user actions such as mouse clicks. It runs on all Windows platforms as well as the Macintosh. To see a Shockwave object, you need the Shockwave plug-in, a program that integrates seamlessly with your Web browser. The plug-in is freely available from Macromedia's Web site as either a Netscape Navigator plug-in or an ActiveX control. Macromedia has added support to call web pages interactively and other network activities. All this adds up to a potent multimedia platform combining sound, animation, "live" objects, and real-time interactivity that can be displayed on the web. "Shocked" sites, as web sites that display Shockwave movies are called, now include Apple, CNN, Sony and MTV. Macromedia software tools empower us to create the most dynamic, responsive, and professional web experience available online:

1. Zoomable vector graphics

2. Fully interactive multimedia

3. Streaming intranet & internet applications

4. Small & fast vector-based animations

5. CD-quality streaming audio

Shockwave players have over 17 million downloads to date, and are preinstalled on numerous Macintosh and Windows computers, making Shockwave the most accessible and widely used multimedia technology on the web. Macromedia Shockwave players are free and available from www.macromedia.com.

QuickTime - is the multi-platform industry-standard multimedia architecture used by software tool vendors and content creators to create and deliver synchronized graphics, sound, video, text  and music. FLiCs, AVI all require pre-existing software to be on your computer before you can view them.  QuickTime player is free and available from www.apple.com.

Javascript - animations require preloading and users can disable Javascript in their browser. JavaScript is a compact, object-based scripting language for developing client and server Internet applications. JavaScript statements can be embedded directly in an HTML page. These statements can recognize and respond to user events such as mouse clicks, form input, and page navigation. For example, we can write a JavaScript function to verify that users enter valid information into a form. Without any network transmission, an HTML page with embedded JavaScript can interpret the entered text and alert the user with a message dialog box if the input is invalid. Or we can use JavaScript to perform an action (such as play an audio file, execute an applet, or communicate with a plug-in) in response to the user opening or exiting a page.

GIF Animation - Self-contained GIF files are downloaded once and played from the computer's disk cache. You can download several per page, and even place a single animated GIF dozens of times on the same page, creating effects that would not be easy with other solutions. Unlike other movie formats, GIF still supports transparency, even in animations. They are as simple to use and implement as any still GIF image. The only thing GIF lacks is sound (and BTW sound has been added to GIFs in the past) and real-time speed variation (like AVI's ability to skip frames when on a slow machine).

2D Animation Samples:

2D Banner Adds:

3D Animations:

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