The Ripple Applet

Ripple takes any gif and shimmers it to produce effects like the one you can see on the left. The program itself is very small and creates the frames of the animation on the browser machine, transferring only the original image across the Net. I wrote this program specifically for use on pages with a watery theme: surf clubs, water companies and so on. Please feel free to use this applet: all I ask is that you provide a link through to my site. This page, the applet and the other files can be downloaded here.

How to use it

To create animation above I

Saved the image I wanted to animate in .GIF format (see right)

Inserted the following code into the page:

<APPLET CODE="ripple" width=190 height=190 align=left border=10>
<param name="image" value="images/ripple.gif">
<param name="period" value="25">
<param name="frames" value="12">
<img src="images/ripple.gif" width=190 height=190 align=left>
</applet>

The "Image" parameter should be set equal to the filename of the .GIF file you want to animate. The period defines the wave size and the frames the number of frames in the animation. Increasing the number of frames will smoothen out animation for large waves, but it will take up more resources on the browser machine.

By default the rippled version of the image will be animated on top of the original, preventing gaps at the side of the image as it shifts back and forth. If you want the gaps to appear then add:

<param name="bordergap" value="on">

Hints and tips

If you have a bordergap but don't want the image to disappear beneath the edges of the applet, add a white border around the sides of the base image.
To get multiple animations easily, make the height of the applet a multiple of the height of the image. You can have as many images as there are frames in the animation.

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For more information contact dgriffiths@msn.com

Last update: August 12, 1996