| Magic Animated Buttons - Documentation
Adjusting transition speeds
For most usage of the Magic Buttons, the default transition
settings will probably be sufficient and you can skip this part
of the documentation.
The transitions in the Magic Buttons are animations. All
animations, whether in applets, web images or on TV, consist of
timed sequences of static frames. If you want to adjust transition
speeds, you need to know a little bit about animation frames. A typical
Magic Buttons transition consists of about 10 to 20 frames, with both
an "in" transition (animates to the highlighted state) and an
"out" transition (animates back to the normal state). Normally
the frames are displayed fast enough for the eye to be deceived into
thinking that there is continuous motion (just like a film). The "in" transition
is normally so fast you hardly see anything of it. The "out" transition is
slower, and the difference between the speeds of the "in" and "out" transitions
is what makes the trail effect when you wave the mouse over the buttons.
If you want to adjust the transitions, there are four factors which
you can alter:
- the number of frames: a low number of frames
may make the transition "jumpy" unless you speed it up; a high number
of frames will make it smoother and use more memory; if your highlight
and normal button states are similar, you may need to reduce the number
of frames to make the transition noticeable.
- the time between each frame: if this is too fast,
you will be wasting memory with no visual gain; if this is too slow, each
frame will "jump", which is unattractive.
- an additional speed factor for the "out" transition: speed
up or slow down the trail effect as the mouse is moved over the buttons.
- an additional speed factor for the "in" transition: normally
the "in" transitions is almost instantaneous; if you wish to have a visible
animation when the mouse moves into a button, you can slow this down, but you
are advised to keep the "in" transition much faster than the "out" transition
for the coolest results.
Overall, if you want a slower animation, you are best advised to increase
the number of frames, and if you want a faster one, use fewer frames.
You set all these factors as follows:
<param name=transition-frames value=20>
<param name=transition-time value=20>
<param name=transition-inspeed value=10>
<param name=transition-outspeed value=3>
You can have between 5 and 30 frames. With the pagefold variation of
the Magic Buttons, which requires subtler intermediate states, you can have up
to 100 frames. Transition time can be between 0 (fast) and 100 (slow) - the number
is a delay measured in milliseconds. Outspeed can range between 1 and 10, while
inspeed can range between 1 and the number of frames. Experiment with these values.
Generally, the ideal setting varies depending on your images.
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