1. Animation and Interactivity

Introduction

Animations can be really annoying!

Today, you see animations anywhere. On the street (especially used for advertisement), on TV (where animation has its seeds) and on computer. Often, animation is very annoying. Everyone's attention is called to blinking objects or animated writings. These animations are used to point at things or products.
Animation does not have to be annoying. It is also used to show the changing and motion of entities what is difficult to visualise without animation. Today, multimedia cartography uses quite often animation to show the changing of attributes. This lesson will show you how which attributes can be animated and give you a few instructions how to create a good animation.

Within the field of cartography, animation is often combined with interactivity, since it allows the user to control the animation.
Interactivity however does not need to be combined with animation. Many multimedia maps are only interactive but not animated. Having the possibility to interact with a map, often means to be able to adjust the map to the user's requirements. Within this lesson we show you what type of interactivity there are and how they can be used within multimedia maps.