Introduction to the AnimationS applet
A general-purpose Java image animator tool for the Web
(AniS)

Greetings!

We hope you are here because you've heard great things about AniS or its predecessor, Ani2. The AniS applet has derived mainly from work done for the VISIT projects' VISITview collaboration and distance learning tool.

AniS is a Java (not JavaScript!) applet for animating images over the web (through browsers). It is not a stand-alone application for image animation. Information about the HTML <APPLET> tag is available here

If your users have questions or issues running Java applets (not just AniS), you might refer them to this information for help.

AniS has most of display features of VISITview, plus a few extras!, but you, as the Web site developer, specify (in the HTML) just what controls will be presented to the user for your specific application.

Important note about using the Java Plug-in If you or your users have installed the Java Plug-in to use with their browsers, please alert them to the necessity of adding a "Java Runtime Option" using the plug-in setup program - especially if they get an OutOfMemory Error. Please click here for the details.

Update information is now available by clicking here.

Detailed parameter documentation is available by clicking here.

Important information about using PNG files. Please click here if you are using the "enable_png" parameter

A Tips and Tricks section will be added soon!

What can AniS do?

• Simple animation of 2 or more images -- you can allow your visitors to have no controls, or a full-set of controls:
  • stop & start animation
  • set animation speed
  • single step frames and change direction of animation sequence
  • go directly to the first or last frame
  • movie looping or "rocking" modes
• Overlays of other images -- if you want to put a map base and some plots or analyses on top of a satellite image, for example. Checkboxes are used to select/un-select overlays.
• Fade between images -- using 8 bit, alpha-component. A slider may be used, or the fading may be animated.
• A set of frame-based toggle buttons to turn individual frames on and off during animations (okay, so MSFC had a good idea...)
• Use the same toggles to show individual frames as well
• Zooming of images (and portals and overlays)
• Roaming around while zoomed
• Portals -- also known as viewports, or window-in-a-window
• Rescaling of large images, if desired.
• Automatic image refresh for real-time applications (with an optional button to turn this on and off)
• Display a single frame/image in a separate browser window so the user can save or print it
• Combinations of most everything!!

Examples

We've prepared several pages of examples that will give you the feeling for what's possible, and start to introduce the HTML needed to run AniS. Please take a look -- the examples start here and there are links at the bottom of each page to the next one! Or, you can just click on a particular example from this list:

• Manual animiation; simple Start/stop and audio; name the image files
• Fade between images
• Start/stop and zooming
• Start/stop, speed, step, loop/rock, zoom
• Overlays
• Using image scaling, active-zooming, and archived files
• Overlays with frame labels and toggle buttons
• Portals
• Portals and overlays together!
• Using the "file_of_filenames" option
• Using the "file_of_filenames" and subdirectory for images

Detailed documentation

There is also a detailed document that defines each parameter.

This document also contains tips on deploying AniS with dynamic web pages, and how to avoid having multiple copies of the class files on your server when you have several animations set up.

How to get the software

1. Download this ZIP file, which contains only the code (class, properties and jar files)
2. Unzip the file your downloaded into a directory by itself and then
3. copy all the .class and .propteries files and the aniscode.jar file into the directory where you will be serving your animations to the outside world
4. if you want to use the default enhancement file, download this enh.tab file and copy it into the target directory as well; otherwise, if you have made your own, then just copy it over.
5. Make your HTML following the examples
6. Make your JPEG or GIF files (Important Note: do not use the GIF "transparency" option in making your image files or your loops will "flash")
7. Put the image files into the directory along with the HTML
8. Turn your users and fans loose!

Note: If you are just updating an existing installation, you need only get this ZIP file (class, properties and jar files only) and unzip it over your current installation of .class and/or .jar file.

Note: Instead of dealing with the .class and properties files, you may instead just copy the aniscode.jar file. If you do this, the applet will load faster on the end user's machine, but you will also have to add an attribute to the <applet> tag:

<applet archive="aniscode.jar" code="AniS.class" height=....>

The AniS Application

You may also run this as a Web Start application by simply clicking here (if you have installed Web Start). You can try this URL if you like:
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/anis/kmkx.radar
which reads radar image files from another site...

That's it!

This applet is Copyright(C) 1999-2005 by Tom Whittaker. You may use this for any lawful purpose, and we are not responsible for what you do with it. It was developed as an outcome of the VISIT Project and uses many classes from the VISITview collaborative training / distance learning tool.