Although you may well have seen many other similar applets in recent months,
which do a variety of text animation effects, from the seminal but awful " nervous
text" to some more advanced versions that can handle effects like starfields. However,
there are several key features that set Display apart from any other animation applet I have
seen:
- Scripting
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Display can be scripted using an HTML like language. This means that you can have
any sequence of text, images and sound effects in your animations, simply by putting HTML tags
into one of the applet's parameters.
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Your scripted animation can be placed in the body of
your HTML page, in the same way that JavaScript can be.
- Plug-in extensions
-
At present, Display supports a wide variety of text
animation effects, and can handle images and sounds - but it is also possible for anybody with
a little programming knowledge to create entirely new effects for Display.
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You can use new effects, in the same way as you would use a new image or sound. This means that you
will never be restricted to a limited range of effects - there is no limit on the number of
effects the Display engine can handle.
- User Response
- Display can respond to user input - this makes it possible to write scripts that function
as buttons, which may, for example, light up when the mouse moves over them, and play an animation or
act as a link when clicked.
- The script language supports sub-routines, so a wide variety of
different behaviours can be achieved by one applet - this saves on loading time.
- Optimised Loading
- All instances of Display on a page will use the same shared cache of images and sounds -
hence each image will only be requested once, and since Display also allows for asynchrous
loading, your animations and buttons will seem to run much faster.
- For example, it is possible to
instantly display an animated text-based welcome animation, while images are loading for a
graphics based animation - this gives your users something to look at, other than a blank box.
- Ease of use
-
Learning to use Display is easy, since it uses HTML style tags, which are edited in
the same way as conventional, static HTML.
-
Loading of images, sound and plug-ins is automated, and all graphics operations are
handled for you - all you need to do is work out want your animation should look like.
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