Animating with Timelines

HTML pages are generally motionless unless you add an animated GIF or a Macromedia Flash movie. You can roll over a button that might appear to move slightly as it swaps out with another image, but it remains static on the page. With Dynamic HTML (DHTML), you have the option to add more extensive animations to your Web page directly within Dreamweaver. These animations are controlled with JavaScript within the HTML page, without the need of a plug-in. The limitation on DHTML animations is that users must use a 4.0 or later browser to view the pages; however, these animations are far more restricted than Flash with which you can do far moreFlash files are also generally more compatible and less buggy. It is recommended to use Flash movies instead of timelines whenever possible. The timelines feature was removed from Dreamweaver MX 2004 for these reasons. It has been added back into Dreamweaver 8 to provide Web developers with the ability to easily edit and maintain legacy pages that were created with previous versions of Dreamweaver. The general features and components of timeline animations are outlined here, for background information on working with older pages. If you are creating an animation, however, the best method is to use Flash.