As you move the mouse over the applet's window from left to right the speed of the animation varies from 1 frame per second to a maximum of 60 frames per second. When the mouse exits the applet window the speed of the animation returns to the value specified in frps.   Users of version 1.0 simply replace the older version of MORPHTEA.class with the new version. No further changes are necessary to upgrade.

• The showbuttons parameter allows you to include or exclude three buttons: "Prev" (previous), "Next", and "Play" allow the user to stop the animation and proceed image by image; the animation resumes playing when the user clicks the "Play" button.
• The frps (frames per second) parameter allows you to determine the speed (frames per second) at which the animation plays.
• As you move the mouse over the applet's window from left to right the speed of the animation varies from 1 frame per second to a maximum of 60 frames per second. When the mouse exits the applet window the speed of the animation returns to the value specified in frps. This feature is new in version 2.0.
• The imageType parameter allows you to use JPG, GIF, or any other image formats displayable on the world wide web.
• The imageFile parameter allows you to display different animations on different web pages (or more than one on the same page) using only one copy of MORPHTEA.class.
• The numImages parameter tells the applet the number of images involved in your animation.
• The imageOrder parameter informs the applet of the order in which you want the images displayed. This parameter can be random, circular (as in the morph above), or linear.
• The backgroundColor parameter allows you to set the applet's background color.
• People viewing your animations don't need to download special software to view animations in order to view yours. Also, the amount of information they download is smaller than if they have to download AVI files, etc. The file size of MORPHTEA.class is just 8K.
• MORPH TEA has been tested on Netscape Gold 3, Internet Explorer 3, 3.02, Netscape 4.0, 4.01, and checked for viruses.

• It's freeware. Chances are you would like to be a web artist or start out in extremely public animation on the web. Hey that sounds like fun! The necessarily brief nature of animations on the web, because of load times and file storage issues, also necessitates powerful brevity of expression in your animations. Be very strong in, say, 16 frames and make each frame less than 10K in file size (160K in total, then).
• Visit my Vispo gallery that contains four morphs (Deus Ex Machina, Tiger Lily, Courtney Cox/Alec Baldwin/Breathing, and a geometric P.K. Morph) as well as a Java poem, a Javascript navbar, and over 25 original graphic works of visual poetry. The graphics and morphs are accompanied with poems, reflections, complaints, ruminations, statements and, (when I get a new sound card) recordings. You can also visit my online writings or the Mocambopo home page. I consider myself a fully-migrated web artist now. These sites are the homes of my current creative endevours as a poet/web artist.
• Drop me a line at jandrews@islandnet.com and show me your work.

1. Download the goodies (see Download).
2. Create an animation or morph animation (or use the one provided). If you don't have a morph program and want one, read Other Tools.
3. Create an HTML file. I assume you know how to do this. If you don't, download WebPen and play around or learn how to use the editor in Netscape.
4. Paste the HTML code in the Overview section of this page into the HTML file (see Configuration).
5. Customize the parameters in the Overview HTML code to accomodate your animation (see Configuration and Parameters).
6. View it in Netscape or Internet Explorer or whatever quality browser you use.
7. Upload your HTML file, the animation graphics, and MORPHTEA.class to the Internet. If you haven't done this before, talk to your Internet provider.

• MORPHTEA.class: The Java executable file you'll finally need to upload to your Internet account if you want your animations to be visible over the Internet.
• f00.jpg, ... f15.jpg : The 16 graphic files required for the Kate Moss/child morph at the top of this page. Feel free to put this morph on your web page. When you unzip MORPHTEA.ZIP, the image files will appear in a subdirectory called images.
• homepage.htm, mainleft.htm, morphtea.htm:  The 3 files involved in the manual. To view the manual, open homepage.htm in your browser.
• Other files: All files not mentioned above are graphics files used by the manual.

Once you've downloaded MORPHTEA.ZIP (and Masakazu's program too, if you're interested in using MORPH TEA to display morphs) and have made an animation you want to put up on the web,

• create an HTML file.
• Then copy the HTML code starting with <APPLET and ending with </APPLET> in the Overview section and paste it somewhere between <body> and </body> into your HTML file.
• If you click and drag starting close to <APPLET then you'll avoid copying the numbers to the left.
• Paste the text into a text editor displaying the source code of the HTML file, not into, for instance, Netscape Gold's WYSIWYG editor. Otherwise, the code that makes the applet run will be treated as text to be displayed, not as an HTML applet tag. If you can see the applet HTML code when you view the HTML file in your browser, then you've made the above error.
• Then customize the parameters of the applet to suit your own animation.
• To learn how to customize the parameters, go to the Overview section: to learn about a particular parameter, click on the hyper-text number to the left of the parameter. If the numbers do not line up with the lines to which they refer, decrease the size of the typeface in your browser.

This line instructs the browser that the file MORPHTEA.class is required.

• Don't change this line.
• Don't rename MORPHTEA.class. The name is required.
• Store the HTML file and MORPHTEA.class in the same directory.

This line is apparently used by Active X controls to manipulate applets. I don't see this applet interfacing with Active X controls--yet, anyway.

• Leave this line as it is.

argument: The integer valued width of the applet measured in pixels. You can observe the width of the animation images using programs such as Paintshop Pro, CorelPaint, Photoshop, or Paintbrush, MSPaint, etc.

• All the images in your animation must have the same width.
• The applet automatically centers images horizontally.
• If the argument of showButtons is true, then the argument of width must be at least the larger of these two numbers:
• the width of the animation images;
• 140 pixels (to accomodate the horizontal distance taken up by the buttons).
• If you set the argument of showButtons to false, then set the width argument to an integer at least as large as the width of the animation images.
• Do not make the argument of width larger than 640.

argument: The integer valued height of the applet measured in pixels.

• All the images in your animation must have the same height.
• If you set the argument of showButtons to true, then:
• the applet reserves 30 pixels at the top of the applet window to show the buttons. The applet vertically centers the animation images in the remaining portion of the applet window;
• ensure that the argument of height is at least 30 greater than the height of the animation images. The applet will not perform properly otherwise.
• If you set the argument of showButtons to false, then:
• the applet vertically centers the animation images in the applet window;
• ensure that the argument of height, in such case, is at least as large as the height of the images. The applet will not perform properly otherwise.
• The argument of height must not exceed 480.

argument: The integer valued frames per second. The argument determines the speed at which the animation plays.

• Set this to about 20.
• Experiment.
• Animations have different tones at different speeds.
• As you move the mouse over the applet's window from left to right the speed of the animation varies from 1 frame per second to a maximum of 60 frames per second. When the mouse exits the applet window the speed of the animation returns to the value specified in frps. The variation of speed while the mouse is in the applet window is automatic. You do not have to set any parameters for this feature.

path: The path from the directory in which your HTML file is located (not including that directory) to the directory in which your image files are located.

• If your image files and your HTML file are in different directories, include a path relative to the directory in which your HTML file is stored. For instance, if your images are located in a subdirectory called images, then the value of path must be images/
• If your image files and your HTML file are in the same directory, then path contains no characters.
• Your image files must all be:
• in the same directory and located in the same directory as the HTML file and MORPHTEA.class
• or in a subdirectory thereof.
• The image files cannot be located above the HTML file in the directory structure or 'sideways.'

MORPHTEA.class expects all image files to be named according to the format outlined below. If image files are not named properly, the animation will not play as expected.

filename.extension = fileNamePrefix+number.extension

fileNamePrefix: the letters or numbers that your image file names begin with.

• All image files must have the same fileNamePrefix.
• It can be composed of any ASCII characters.
• It can be one to six characters long. No longer than 6.
• In the Overview example, the value of fileNamePrefix is f.
• The names of all sixteen image files in the Overview example begin with f.

• MORPHTEA.class assumes that you have included numbers in the names of your files.
• The value of number in the name of the first image you want displayed must be 00; the second image must be numbered 01, etc., up to a maximum value of 99 for the hundreth image.
• MORPHTEA.class will display only the first 100 images of animations that involve more than 100 images.

• This is covered below in the discussion of imageType.

You may find that when you test your animation on your own computer it works. Then you upload it to the Internet and suddenly it doesn't work. What happened? If your upload was successful, then the problem probably has to do with upper and lower case conflicts in naming files.

Though case likely does not matter on your system, it does on Internet systems, typically. For instance, if you set the argument of imageType to gif but upload files that actually have an uppercase GIF extension, MORPH TEA will not function properly. Similarly, if you set fileNamePrefix to yow but actually your image files begin with Yow, then MORPH TEA will not function correctly.
 
Just to make life more difficult, programs like Photoshop default to naming file extensions in capitals.
 
It is difficult to really observe the case of the file in a lot of Windows 95 programs. I recommend WS_FTP when you transfer files from your computer to the Internet. It shows the case of the files on your hard drive and the case of your files on the Internet. And it is a superb file transfer utility for Windows 95.

argument: This is the file extension of your image files.

• argument can have the value jpg, JPG, gif, GIF, or any other image file type displayable on the world wide web.
• If you set argument to jpg but your files actually have an upper case JPG extension, MORPH TEA will not work properly. Whatever value argument has, each image file must have the same case sensitive extension.
• All the images in your animation must be of the same type.

argument: This is the total number of images involved in the animation.

• This cannot exceed 100 and must be at least 3.
• The total number of bytes involved in your animation image files should probably not exceed 120K, currently, or you will exhaust peoples' patience. 120K is optimistic unless you have promised much for the wait.
• The images used in the morph at the top of this page total about 40K.

argument: The background color of the applet.

• Acceptable values are black, blue, cyan, darkGray, gray, green, lightGray, magenta, orange, pink, red, white, yellow. These values are case sensitive.
• The background color displays in the portion of the applet window not covered with buttons or animation images.

argument: the value of argument determines whether the "Prev", "Next" and "Play" buttons appear onscreen when the applet is run.

• Acceptable values for this parameter are true or false (case sensitive).
• If you set showButtons to true, then your applet will display the three buttons shown in the Overview morph (unless you set imageOrder to random, in which case the buttons do not display).
• The buttons will display at the top of the applet.

argument: The value of argument determines the order in which the applet displays the images.

Acceptable values for this parameter are circular, linear, or random. The values are case sensitive.

• circular: The images will play from first (00) to last (n). Then n-1, then n-2, etc., down to 00, then 01, then 02, etc. (as in the Overview section morph).
• linear: The images will play from first (00) to last (n). Then the applet will repeat the same sequence.
• random: The images will be displayed in random order. The buttons will not display if you choose random. This is true regardless of whether showButtons is set to true or false.

If you're interested in making morphs, then I recommend Morpher by Masakazu Fujimiya. It's what I use. And it's only $20. It's available on the net here. It's fully functional, easy to use, produces high quality images, and is available for Windows (16 bit and 32 bit versions) and the Mac.