Animation
Big changes
The implementation of CSS3 and HTML5 by browser manufacturers, is changing the way the web works. In the past, to create animation on the client machine, Flash, Javascript/DOM scripting (Document Object Model) would have been the most likely methods used.
Flash required Actionscript programming and in any case was not always supported on the client browser, and Javascript might be disabled on the client machine. The Document Object Model was also implemented differently by different browsers.
With the introduction of Internet Explorer 10 this year all major browsers will offer significant support for transitions (fades etc), translation (moving things about) and more complex animation. Microsoft is trailing the other major browser producers by a long way, but fortunately, others are already implementing many of these new features.
Many Choices
CSS3 and HTML5 add to the possibilities of how to animate your site. The options are to use the following;
- Flash to create simple or complex animations
- Javascript and DOM to animate pages (fading menus and images, image viewers etc)
- CSS3 to add transitions (timed changes of stylesheet attributes, translations etc), transforms (moving, resizing, skewing, rotating), and animation (more complex changes of the above)
- Flash to include audio and video on your site
- Youtube to include video on your site
- HTML5 to add audio and video on your site very simply!
The last method marks one of the biggest advances from current HTML, as it will make the addition of sound and video to a site, a very simple matter. It is not universally implemented in browsers at the moment however.