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My Little Ol' Banner
Yep, I made this banner with my own two hands. It certainly won't win any awards for artistic merit, but considering that I spent just a few minutes dragging and dropping components, and that I began this exercise with zero knowledge about animated banners, it's a pretty darn good first try. If you are interested in creating banners with Windows-like components (buttons, scroll bars, tabs, etc.), then BannerCrafter is a good choice. First a few words about animated banners. Most banners today are still animated GIF files, which means the banner is stored using the GIF graphics format. In this format, each frame of the animation is given its own block in the file. Consequently, even though there are multiple images, there is only one GIF file. In the case of my little banner, it has 5 frames. The first frame has a teal circle on the left, then the word "I". The second frame has a teal square, then the word "made". The third repeats the circle, but uses the word "this". The fourth repeats the square, but uses the word "banner!". The fifth frame has the button labelled "Ta-Dah!". The background remains the same through out. BannerCrafter When you bring up BannerCrafter, you start by clicking Add on the main window. Once you do that, several auxilliary windows pop up on your screen. The Edit Window is the one you use to make your creations. The following figure shows a shrunk-down picture of the Edit Window with my first frame in it.
In addition to the Edit Window, there is an Object Inspector window. Each object in your Edit Window -- the background, the circle and the word "I" has its own Inspector. When you select an object, you can modify its characteristics in its Object Inspector window. The next figure shows the Object Inspector for the circle. It can be modified by selecting the various fields and changing the values. One field, for example, is the shape, which is currently set to stCircle.
Another window that you get is the Component Palette. There are numerous objects that you can select from the palette to drop into the Edit window. The next figure shows just a little of the palette.
Next, how I created the banner. Page 2
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