Animated imagery...

[Andy Goldberg]

Most animated GIF imagery can be easily "frozen" by merely clicking the
stop button on the browser or pressing the escape key.  If you don't
like 'em, just stop 'em!  

An excellent application of animated GIFs can be found at Michael
Linder's award winning site (http://www.linder.com/muybridge_1.html)
where they are used to present Edweard Muybridge's pioneering efforts in
the development of the motion picture.

Last month there was a brief discussion of Netscape's InBox offering
where HTML pages are sent via email.  There was a concern about
bandwidth.  The service is quite useful and is a taste of things to
come.  Daily or weekly, I receive formatted pages from a number of news
services where I have customized the content to suit my interests.  The
content of the email has no more bandwidth requirement than ordinary
email because the imagery is not contained in the message.  The messages
only contain links to remote sites for this and make no more demands on
bandwidth than visiting a typical website.

Netscape's 3.0 browser has the capability to display HTML in the email
reader, but has no ability to send mail formatted this way.  I put out
an experimental HTML email newsletter but had to use a CGI script to
enable the transmission of the MIME content.  We will see more of this
as Netscape clearly plans to enable the sending of HTML mail in their
next version.  Microsoft will likely follow as they continue the
escalation of the content wars.

There is a downside of course, and unfortunately this is the future of
junk email!  Since HTML email can contain Javascript routines, it is a
simple matter to force the browser to open a window at a remote site
upon reading the message, or play audio or video clips, etc.  Ready or
not---here it comes!

You can always read your mail with Javascript disabled.  At our local
public library where I manage the website and internet access program,
patrons have no access to email.

--A