By Scott Clark Full-featured multimedia banners and buttons for all! When we were in the middle of our graphic editors feature last month, Microsoft had not yet launched their new product, Liquid Motion. When we finally got to take a look at it, we decided that our readers would probably like to know more about this new animation/banner/button tool. MS Liquid Motion allows developers to create professional looking banners, buttons and effects, complete with animation and sound, using drag-and-drop techniques, with no coding! Microsoft Liquid Motion: http://www.microsoft.com/liquidmotion/ Price: $149 standard price Demo Version:MS Try and Buy Page System Requirements:
Pentium PC
16MB of RAM (32MB recommended under NT)
Microsoft Windows 95/NT4 or later
Super VGA, 800x600, 16-bit color recommended (minimum SVGA, 640x480, 256 colors)
30MB available hard disk space
The tool creates the animations using a combination of DirectX API calls, Java and JavaScript. Although Liquid Motion creates animations that work best in MSIE4+ using DirectX, the Netscape4+ browser is able to view them as well using a Java applet. Earlier versions of either browser are also supported, however, not all of the effects will work, specifically Sparkles, Bubbles, Smoke, and other DirectX effects. Liquid Motion animations can respond to events such as mouse movements, or browser events, such as onload, and can include audio, image and text effects. Designers also have the ability to utilize animations within other animations.
