From

the early days of the web, when the only thing that moved on your screen was the mouse cursor - there's now a bewildering array of methods for animating pages. Here's a selection:-

• Java.
• Shockwave, Flash (formerly FutureSplash). Macromedia's Shockwave plug-ins and Flash are leaders in plug-in animation.
• QuickTime is the multi-platform industry-standard multimedia architecture used by software tool vendors and content creators to create and deliver synchronized graphics, sound, video, text and music. FLiCs, AVI all require pre-existing software to be on your computer before you can view them.
• mBED. mbedlets are interactive multimedia interfaces within web pages. They include graphics, animation, sound. They stream data directly off the web as needed and attempt to use bandwidth as efficiently as possible. They can communicate back to the server using standard HTTP methods. And they respond to user actions such as mouse clicks and key events.
• Enliven,
• and Sizzler.
• Javascript animations require preloading and users can disable Javascript in their browser.
• Framation (TM) is a technique using a combination of meta-refresh and frames.
• GIF animation. Self-contained GIF files are downloaded once and played from the computer's disk cache. You can download several per page, and even place a single animated GIF dozens of times on the same page, creating effects that would not be easy with other solutions. Unlike other movie formats, GIF still supports transparency, even in animations. They are as simple to use and implement as any still GIF image. The only thing GIF lacks is sound (and BTW sound has been added to GIFs in the past) and real-time speed variation (like AVI's ability to skip frames when on a slow machine).