This is an enhancement of Sid's very first animation applet. The information about the images and effects are downloaded from a text file. This enables several versions of the applet on different pages to be updated in one go. If some of the values are omitted from the file then the default values on each html page are used. Each web page can use the same images and links but a different effect!

The following effects are currently available.

• cover The new image drops over the previous one.
• reveal The image scrolls away to reveal the next image.
• shutter The first image scrolls off the screen and the second scrolls in from the same direction.
• shuffle The second image enters the screen and the old image scrolls off in the same direction.
• shift The second image pushes the old one out of the way.
• expand The new image expands over the old
• contract The old image contracts out of the way revealing the new image.
• rotate The images appear to rotate into view.
• replace Use this to simply replace the old image. (Directions ignored.)
• FILL Slowly fills in the image line by line

The above will work in any direction - up, down, left or right.

• fold Folds the old image to reveal the new one.
• unfold Unfolds new image over old image.
• explode Explodes the new image from the centre of the applet over old image.
• implode Implodes the old image towards the centre of display to reveal new image.
• zoom A combination of Implode and Explode changing from one image to the next. The old image zooms into the centre of display and the new image zooms out.
• SCAN Adds random lines of the new image until it is complete.
• FADE Using random pixels, slowly fade in the new image
• MOSAIC Fills the old image with "tiles" of the new image until complete
• random See below ...

You can also choose to show a random effect, from those available, by using the instruction random in place of the effect name. All subsequent effects will be the same until another effect (or another random instruction) is found in the text file.

The command line for each image/animation in the text file is configured with:

All the above values must be separated with a comma. Any value except the image and link can be omitted - the previous (or default) value will be used instead. Upper and/or lower case can be used.

The default values for most of the above values can be set with the parameter values: command, direction, target, speed, delay and framedelay. For example

Values which effect all images:

 filename	-     Relative path to text file
 sound          -     Relative link to .au sound file
 showrandom	-     Show images at random (True or False)
 bgcolor	-     Background colour (RRGGBB)
 textcolor	-     Text colour for start text (RRGGBB)
 start          -     Text displayed during initialization/loading
 system         -     Shows system errors/messages (True or False)
 reload         -     Reloads the Text file at the end of a complete
                      image cycle. (True or False)

The SYSTEM option shows messages that may be of use when testing your set-up. When set to TRUE you can see where images are being loaded from and if any errors occur during loading of the text file.

Now you can add a static "Overlay" image on top of your animation. Add your company logo, picture frame or text - it doesn't move! This image is NOT sized to the applet and is drawn from the top-left of the display area so if you want to add an image to the bottom-right corner you will have to create a transparent GIF file the same size as the applet.

Use <PARAM="overlay" VALUE="images/overlay.gif"> to add this facility. The adverts in the top frame have a 360x60 pixel, 16 colour GIF with the image on the right-hand side. The rest of the image is transparent - if it isn't please let me know!

Additional Overlay options. "HIDE" This option allows you to show the overlay ONLY during image transitions. Using another option "WAIT" adds a delay before the overlay image is removed from the screen. This time is added to the main "FRAMEDELAY" parameter.

 overlay	-	Path to overlay image file.
 hide		-	Hide overlay after transition (True or False)
 wait		-	Delay before removing overlay (milliseconds)

View the source text file for this display to see how to format your own document. Each line of text needs to be terminated with CR/LF rather than the single UNIX character.

To use this Applet in your own web pages first download the sidArchive.jar file and copy it to the same directory as your HTML pages. Or copy it into a sub-directory and add CODEBASE="sub-directory/", in the APPLET command line.

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