Grab That Graphic!
Creating Web pages that are more than just text can be fun
the age old adgage, work smarter, not harder
holds true for page layout and design. The Internet is loaded
with thousands
of graphics, photos, animations, and mulitmedia images that can
enhance your pages and make your
site sizzle . Why settle for plain web pages when you can
add zip, zazz, and zing to every page you
create.
The easiest way to spice up a web page is to add interesting graphic
elements. The Web Graphics tutorial
will familiarize you with locating and saving graphics from the
Intenet onto a floppy disk or your
harddrive. Once you have collected your images, you will be
ready to add them to the layout of your
page. Remember, when visiting free graphics sites, most artists
will ask that you include a link back
to their page in exchange for the use of their images. Many
themed sets and images are copyrighted and
we
all want to practice good Netiquette so please do the right thing.
Moving objects add dimension and interest to your site.
Animated gifs are plentyful on the Internet. Gif files are usually
small which means they will load quickly and not take up lots of space
on your server. Other animation options
are scrolling text, falling objects, animated graphics and text
created in layers. Simple animation can be placed
on your web pages with a few lines of HTML. More complicated
actions such as animating gifs and creating
multimedia will require the use of professional software.
Tools of the Trade:
The following software programs will help you create gif images and
other animations. Some of these are
freeware or shareware files that can be downloaded from the Internet.
Others are more advanced professional
Web design programs that come with tools to create layered animations,
animated gifs,
Adobe Photoshop
Painter 5.5
Paint Shop Pro
Adobe Illustrator
Macromedia Director
Macromedia Shockwave
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Macromedia Shockwave
Macromedia Flash
Adobe GoLive
For more information on using these programs to create Web animation, try the following tutorials.
Digital technology affords teachers to bring the excitement of
video into their classrooms and on their Web
Sites. Short Quick Time movies provide rich content and information
to otherwise silent pages. The tools
to bring video to your computer desktop are :
The following tutorials will
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced