HTML5 Programming with JavaScript For Dummies

Chapter 20

Animating the Web

In This Chapter

Understanding the jQuery user interface features

Using a canvas to draw on a document

Everyone likes special effects. You see special effects everywhere today. Of course, they appear in movies, but even common billboards often have special effects. From the glittery lights that festoon children’s shoes to the blinking of Christmas lights, life has become a festival of special effects. It isn’t too surprising that special effects also appear on Websites, and those sites that lack special effects are often called boring or sometimes aren’t noticed at all. Some developers equate special effects to eye candy — to the glitz that attracts the attention of the consumer, sometimes at the expense of useful content.

Special effects do have useful purposes. One of the most important reasons to use special effects is to focus user attention. A mouseover effect can help people interact with a page with greater ease, especially when lighting conditions or other environmental factors make it hard to see the cursor. Helping the user to focus means that you get better input from the user and the user has a better experience from the application.

In many cases, special effects appear as widgets that you can use to better convey the sort of input that ...