One way to increase the exciting visuals of your Web page is to add a movie clip, by using the DYNSRC attribute that Microsoft Internet Explorer supports
within the IMG tag.
If you've wandered around the Microsoft Web site much, you've probably run into the
Volcano Coffee demo page that includes the spinning cup image that you see here on the
left. Without too much trouble, you've no doubt been able to find the code that is used
to display and control these sorts of images on your page.
<IMG SRC="/workshop/author/roberth/set2/cupalt.gif" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=100 DYNSRC="/workshop/author/roberth/set2/cup.avi" START="MOUSEOVER">
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But what might have been missing from this information is a discussion of how to
properly use this functionality on your site, so that your readers are not paying a
high price for your need to flex your creative muscles.
The image we see here is a relatively small AVI file. It is only 100 pixels wide
by 100 pixels tall, and consists of 15 frames. The download size of the file, however,
is nearly 57K. If you've taken a look at my HTML Coding Tips, you've seen that I
recommend that you try to keep below 50K for the size of the combined graphic files
associated with any one page. This one graphic zips you right past that limit.
So while you might think it is cool to include an AVI file on your page, please
remember that not all of your readers will be connected up via a T1 link to your
site, and they might get extremely annoyed if you start using a lot of AVI files.
Within this set of pages, I've put together a few examples that show you how you
might use an AVI file to add a bit of pizzazz to your pages, without requiring
too much in the way of download time.