molly.com

Monday 19 July 2004

flashback: push animation – pre 1995

This is an animated GIF that portrays a push (server-driven) animation technique used in Netscape prior to 1995. This is not the real technique. You have to watch the GIF version first, read on for the technical explanation. The link to the original technique comes in just a bit.

animated gif poem

[Yes, for some people at skinny display widths or resolutions, this appears wide. Spread your browser. File does not loop. Hit browser refresh to view again.]

To accomplish this technique, my friend Matt Straznitskas and I used my poem When a Fantasy is What You Hang your Life On for the animation’s content. Then, Matt illustrated it and created the optimized GIF files. We worked on the simple HTML and listings together. The ingredients were:

  • Non-animated GIF files,
  • a text file saved with a .lst extension giving the sequence of each slide in the animation,
  • an HTML document with a bgcolor in the body set to #000000, (natch)!
  • A server-side script of some sort – I don’t know where that is on the server now, but I believe it was just a simple Symphony in C.

Browser Support

Here’s where push animation of a decade ago’s generation really gets interesting in contemporary web browsers. We have support in everything but IE, at least on Windows, which is all I could check on at the moment.

browser version
Netscape version 1.1 right on through to today’s 7.x versions. Wow.
Mozilla Works in 1.6. Hey, I bet it goes back to early days. Someone want to help me check that out?
Firefox Renders in 0.9.2 as an animation, just as it would have in Netscape 1.1.. Damn, with the bandwidth speed these days and how fast Firefox renders pages I’m getting really dizzy.
Internet Explorer No Windows version of IE supports this technique. The html page will load, but a broken image will appear. It seems that some Mac IE versions will support the technique.
Opera Opera displays the first GIF image. Interesting.

Seem familiar? It’s time we just get on with da facts, Jack: Gecko browsers pretty much rule the day, with Safari and Lynx coming along for the ride.

And Now for the Real Thing . . .

So here my friends, I present to you: The original push animation!

By following that link and using one of the supporting browsers listed, you will see the original push animation as we launched it about a decade ago. Keep in mind that this is maximized for 28.8 baud modems! The speed of the inline GIF is more or less what we were able to accomplish server-side using that bandwidth. If you’re on high speed, the original server-side version is going to fly by and you’ll just see lots of sexy (or offensive) words. Everything is up for interpretation, says I.

Mac results, anyone?. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee. . . . flashbacks are so much fun. :)

Filed under:   flashback
Posted by:   Molly | 18:15 | Comments (17)

17 Responses to “flashback: push animation – pre 1995”

  1. Isis says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 18:23

    I see the animation on Safari 1.2.2. :)

  2. jek says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 18:29

    Opera 7.51 and IE 6 both worked for me (on WinXP).

  3. molly says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 19:35

    not the animation inline, the link. This one: the real push animation.

  4. Eric says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 19:49

    It doesn’t work in Safari 1.2.2. Oh well.

  5. Matt Burris says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 19:54

    That animation reminds me why I shouldn’t have done blotter acid in the past. Wait a sec, wrong flashback.

  6. mr. helpful says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 20:48

    I cant comment on the mechanics of the animation because it is way, way out of my league but I love the poem…especially the title..that is one seriously cool title molly….

  7. nikkiana says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 21:09

    *cracks up* Animated gifs were way over my head. I didn’t even learn how to do them until they were out of vogue, so I obviously didn’t use them. Funny stuff though.

  8. Porter says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 23:21

    I would bet that the reason IE’s choking on it doesn’t really have anything to do with the technique itself, but rather with the way the image’s URL is put together.

  9. jek says:
    Monday 19 July 2004 at 23:37

    Ahh, gotchya. Sorry ’bout that. RC 101 is on the horizon.

    Anyway, IE6 doesn’t work, but Opera 7.51 does. Don’t know what your problem is. ;)

  10. Michael Guitton says:
    Tuesday 20 July 2004 at 03:35

    works in IE5/Mac.

  11. Michael Guitton says:
    Tuesday 20 July 2004 at 03:45

    http://www.radzone.org/tutorials/animate.html
    ; a tutorial on server push animation (!)

    http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q159/6/50.ASP
    ; server push animation not supported in IE

  12. molly says:
    Tuesday 20 July 2004 at 05:49

    Porter: Oh yeah? How so? This technique is not known to work in IE, and it’s not like I’m trying to make it do so, but if it’s something ‘just in the URL,’ don’t you think people would have figured that out? And since they didn’t, maybe you can illuminate?

    Michael G: It doesn’t work for IE 5 mac here. Are you sure you’re looking at the link version? NOT the GIF. Thanks for the cool links, though :)

  13. erica says:
    Tuesday 20 July 2004 at 10:38

    both the inline and the link work in IE 5.2/Mac

  14. Michael Guitton says:
    Wednesday 21 July 2004 at 08:47

    The *link* version works fine in IE 5.1.6 (5010) for Mac OS 9. IE5/Mac is a different kind of animal (far better than its Windows sibling. ;-) Too bad that Microsoft halted the evolution of this great Web browser on the Mac platform. Many thanks to Tantek…

  15. Yvonne says:
    Sunday 25 July 2004 at 09:59

    doesn’t work on Safari 1.2.2 (Mac OS X 10.3.x)

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