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Animations/Graphics

Using Animations and Graphics on Your Course Website

It's definitely tempting to put a lot of clever, hi-tech animations and graphics on your site. Check out Web Page Design for a quick review of why 'less is more.'

Every graphic that you include on a page should support the message. Ask yourself about the image’s purpose and use -- if you can't defend its presence, leave it out!

Also, if you use a graphic repeatedly throughout your site, downloading time will be reduced. That's because once the image is downloaded the first time, it remains in the computer’s cache. The next time that image appears on the site, it will be called from the cache instead of the Internet.

Want the animations to stop? Try pressing the ESC key or the Stop icon. Press Reload or Refresh to restart the animations.

While it's important to remember that a little goes a VERY long way when adding graphics and animations to web pages, the following FREE resources can help personalize your site.

Xara3D Headings provides different fonts and styles that allow you to create and save headings like this in seconds:

Cooltext.com allows you to create and save your own free banners and buttons like this:

At Flamingtext.com you can design free animated and static banners, such as:

Animationonline.com lets you instantly create free banners and flash animations like these:

There are many free graphics sites on the Internet; here is one of the best:

Bestanimations.com offers over 2000 3D animated gifs arranged by category. Examples include:
flashing light bulb checklist winged alarm clock live video icon flying pig