Internet Explorer Administration Kit

Animated Bitmap Tools

Two separate tools are included with the IEAK to help you create customized animated bitmaps for your browser:

The first tool takes a series of sequentially numbered bitmaps and stacks them into one bitmap with the correct form for animation.

The second tool allows you to preview the animation of the bitmap. This tool can also be used to display any correctly formatted bitmap.

Be sure to use the correct size and format for the bitmaps. For more information, review Creating Customized Graphics.

Note
These tools are provided for the benefit of the administrator and are not to be distributed as supported Microsoft products. Both tools can be found in the \Reskit\Tools\Animate directory.

Animated Bitmap Creator (Makebmp.exe)

This tool is run from an MS-DOS command prompt. The files you use should be numbered sequentially beginning with 0. For example, Iebmp0.bmp Iebmp1.bmp Iebmp2.bmp ... Iebmp24.bmp. When referring to these files, the basename would be Iebmp. When specifying the name of the output file to be created, include the .bmp extension.

To run this tool, type the following at an MS-DOS command prompt:

MAKEBMP BASENAME NUMFILES OUTPUTNAME

Keywords
MAKEBMP - executable file
BASENAME - root filename (without numbers and .bmp extension)
NUMFILES - number of bitmaps to sequentially add
OUTPUTNAME - output file name (include .bmp file extension)

Example
To combine files Bitmap0.bmp through Bitmap19.bmp, you would type the following:

MAKEBMP BITMAP 20 FINAL.BMP

Animated Bitmap Previewer (Animbmp.exe)

You can start the previewer either from an MS-DOS command prompt or from Windows Explorer. After Animbmp.exe is started, there are two ways to preview an animated bitmap: drap and drop the file into the box, or choose Open from the File menu. The bitmap will loop continuously, but will show the lead-in frames only once.

To quit the previewer, on the File menu, click Exit.