Graphics/Animation on access form 3

[fun4me]

Has anyone ever put an animated graphic on their access form. I sometimes use powerpoint and get some of the graphics from Microsofts online link and want to know how to use the animated gif files or is this not possible.

Any help would be appreciated!!!

 

[FancyPrairie]

Check this out faq181-108

 

[fun4me]

I can't seem to get to the fttp site but will try later.
Is there a way to setup something that can be run automatically on my users machines to do the registering?

 

[BillPower]

Hi fun4me and FancyPrairie,

Gif89.dll doesn't work properly. Honestly, I'm not star hunting, but on certain PC's you might be lucky to see only a portion of your animation on screen.

For another FREE Ocx maybe take a look at thread702-614979

Bill

 

[Maquis]

Hi there, I've used animated gifs on my forms without using any activeX controls. All you need is the timer event and some VBA coding know how.


First you'll need to split the animated gif up into it's separate pictures and store each picture as a separate gif file. There are some utilities out there which can do this.

Next put all of the separate gifs on your form. Each in the exact same position on the form and set the visible property to false for all the images except the 1st one.

Now you need to set your Timer interval (200 works good) and put code in the timer event to switch the visibility of each image.

Here's an example for an animated gif composed of 3 images.


Private Sub Form_Load()
Me.TimerInterval = 200
Me!image1.Visible = True
Me!image2.Visible = False
Me!image3.Visible = False
End Sub


Private Sub Form_Timer()
If Me!image1.Visible = True Then
Me!image1.Visible = False
Me!image2.Visible = True
ElseIf Me!image2.Visible = True Then
Me!image2.Visible = False
Me!image3.Visible = True
Else
Me!image3.Visible = False
Me!image1.Visible = True
End If
End Sub

Maq
<insert witty signature here>

 

[Zeroanarchy]

fun4me I spent a lot of time looking into animation in Access and I would advise against it, as Billpower mentioned it will not work on all machines. Infact if you do a search you will see that people asking for animation has been around for some time. I suggest you go with what Maquis mentioned, its simple and very easy to use and has a lot less problems.

cheers

ZeroAnarchy
Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake
when you make it again.

 

[FancyPrairie]

I've used Maquis method in the past. Animation wasn't that great, especially if your animation contained a lot of frames. The best method I've found so far (and was reminded of it when I got home tonight (just began using it a couple months ago)), is using the ActiveX control &quot;Microsoft Web Browser&quot;. All machines should have it so you don't have to distribute it along with your runtime (AOL uses it for their web pages). It's really cool! You can insert the browser in your form and display just about anything (Word Document, Excel spreadsheet, html documents, gif files, flash files, etc.)

To display a gif file (or any animation file) simply insert the ActiveX control and in the OnOpen event of the form (or whatever) insert the following code. (Note that I declared the variable &quot;abc&quot; simply so that when I type &quot;abc.&quot;, Access will display the properties for the control. Also, the name I gave to the ActiveX control is ocxWeb)

Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)

Dim abc As WebBrowser

ocxWeb.Navigate (&quot;C:\My Documents\My Pictures\MyAnimationFile.gif&quot

End Sub

Give it a try, you'll be amazed at what it can do. There is one annoyance with it. If you want to re-resize it, you have to exit the form, go into design mode and resize it again. It doesn't allow you to do it more than once per design session (if I remember correctly).

 

[fneily]

If I may throw my 1/2 cent in - Flash 5 animations work great. I've done everything from scrolling banners to complex kaleidoscopes, ripple effects, laser simulation. They take about a 1/2 to 1 hr to create but people seem to enjoy them. And Flash creates very small files, sometimes smaller them the animated gifs.

Neil

 

[MichaelRed]

on the down side, most 'production' environments will not appreciate animation in the long term. It may be 'cute' on a opening screen -briefly- but as a more-or-less constant part of prpoduction forms (data entry in particular) they become a distractiom. If it is truly &quot;just for fun&quot; e.g to try the process and understand it, then by all means, explore the capabilities otherwise I strongly recommend either avoiding it entirely or -perhaps- VERY sparing use.




MichaelRed
m.red@att.net

Searching for employment in all the wrong places