DirectAnimation Powers Up Animation, Multimedia in Internet Explorer 4.0

Salim AbiEzzi
Program Manager
Microsoft Corporation

July 28, 1997

The following article was originally published in the MSDN Online Web Workshop Magazine.

Thanks to DirectAnimation, no browser has boasted as many built-in animation and multimedia capabilities as Internet Explorer 4.0, which features DirectAnimation as an integrated component. And because DirectAnimation is integrated with Dynamic HTML, it is especially suited to adding compact animation effects to Web pages.

A component of the DirectX family of APIs, DirectAnimation provides unified, comprehensive support for such diverse media types as 2-D vector graphics, 3-D graphics, sprites, audio, and video, and a uniform time and event model. Because it is a COM API with an underlying engine/run time, DirectAnimation's functionality can be accessed -- in different ways -- by a wide variety of programmers and authors:

HTML authors can integrate animation using the DirectAnimation controls.
Authors using Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript) or JScript™, and Java applet writers, can program Web-page animation with Dynamic HTML.
Programmers using Java, Visual Basic, and Visual C++™ can develop ActiveX Controls or full applications that require multimedia support and interactivity.

Animated Discussion

Public news groups on the msnews.microsoft.com NNTP server provide a forum for the DirectAnimation user community:

For users of the DirectAnimation controls:
microsoft.public.multimedia.directx.danimation.controls
For programmers of the DirectAnimation API:
microsoft.public.multimedia.directx.danimation.programming

For comment on DirectAnimation, please send mail to dxmbeta@microsoft.com

Salim AbiEzzi is a multimedia program manager at Microsoft.

Go Direct to the source

The DirectAnimation run time comes as part of Internet Explorer 4.0 minimal install.

The DirectAnimation software development kit (SDK) is available in the Internet Client SDK , either for download or browsing.

For a white paper on DirectAnimation, check the "Getting Started" document in the Internet Client
SDK .
For technical how-to questions, check in with the Web Men Talking, the MSDN Online Web Workshop's answer pair.