There are two key issues with AVI files. One is that they can get quite large,
the other is that not all browsers (or operating systems) support AVI files. Therefore,
if you want to utilize the DYNSRC attribute of the IMG tag, you need to carefully
take these issues into consideration.
I consider this a good use of an AVI file: It is relatively small in
size, being only 5 frames with a resolution of 64 by 43 pixels. The overall download
size of the file is 10K, and this is with absolutely no compression whatsoever. It also
adds no necessary functionality to the page, which means that if a
user comes to this site with a browser that doesn't support AVI, they will still have
access to all features of the site.
Here is how you might implement something like this on a page. Move the mouse over
the magnifying glass.
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The image for the above fictitious example comes from the
SoftImage
Web site.
I pulled the image into PaintShop Pro
, then I
reduced the color depth to use the standard 16 Windows colors so that it would
be easier to manipulate. I then made two additional copies of the image. In one
copy, I changed the dark gray pixels in the spotlight to light yellow. In the
second copy, I changed the dark gray pixels to dark yellow, and the light gray
pixels to light yellow. This gave me a total of three images:
I then ran the AVIEdit tool that comes with the Win32 SDK, and using the clipboard
to move images from PaintShop Pro to AVIEdit, I copied the images over in the following
sequence: 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. This resulted in the AVI file you see above, which does a visual
"build" from the gray spotlight to a yellow spotlight, and then back to gray again. When this is put onto a page and uses the START="MOUSEOVER" attribute, it creates what is known as
a rollover effect. When the user rolls their mouse over the
image, it does its little flicker effect, attempting to indicate to the user that
clicking on this image will do something.