This research examines the status and use of motion effects on the Internet, notably the use of images, animation, DHTML, flash, and other attributes of the GUI that have to do with creating motion effects on the computer screen. The research will set forth a working definition of the subject and then discuss the varieties of animation that may be identified as Internet functional.
Computer animation refers to sophisticated computer-graphics applications that create images that move on a computer screen. Generically, the figures are referred to as computer-generated imagery, or CGI (Romney 45). The principal animation application of the past five years is enhancement of Internet (Web) sites. Animation is an attention-getting device that is meant to support a site's commercial features.
Internet-based spending on advertising and promotion has reached the multibillion-dollar level. However, more corporate online marketing investment goes to proprietary Internet Presence Sites (IPSs) than to advertising on another site (Ghose and Dou 29). User visits to an IPS are an index of interest in a company's products or services, and the truism that the more time a customer prospect spends with a company the more chance a sale will be made applies to the IPS environment as to other areas of marketing. Animation that enriches content and imagery of a site can "motivate consumers with messages embedded with interactive presentations" (Ghose and Dou 35), i.e., convert browsers into customers.
Ghose and Dou describe such animation applications as online games, an Electrolux vacuum cleaner sucking up bugs, virtual-reality displays of automobile features and performance on the sites of General Motors and BMW, "mini-movies" at the Coca-Cola site, and a washer repair-diagnostics interface at the Whirlpool site. But the user interface is really the consequence, or last step, of a process of design and programming that incorporates the technology o...