how to make banner ads?

[Frosty]

okay, here`s a lame question: what is the easist way i can create a small animated banner? Do i download some kind of program from download.com that would make it really easy to make one?
I`ve never made a banner before so...........

:cry:

[Martie]

Hi frosty,
You can try
http://www.animationonline.com
where you can create them instantly.
You can dload a copy of paint shop pro (trial)
http://www.jasc.com

[Tommy]

This is a really good guide
http://www.zdnet.com/coinfo/filters/animation/

And here are some tips to make it a success
http://clickz.com/article/cz.3903.html

Email me offline if you need some feedback on your designs. tommy.lai@webhostdir.com

[Jaiem]

Those will work but a cheap looking ad is as bad as no ad.

Invest in a good graphics package such as Fireworks or PhotoShop. You can use it for many other things too.

[Tommy]

I personally use Photoshop and I created the ads that appear from time to time on Web Host Directory to advertise this forum.

I've alwyas used Photoshop for banner ads but I think you can acheive good results using some of the free software. It's not the cratfman's tools but what he does with it that counts. Obviously if you went for high detail and wanted lots of effects then a top end tool would help.

You can download a trial version of Fireworks from Macromedia.com and I would think that Adobe.com would have a Photoshop trial too.

[akashik]

http://www.selteco.com/

These guys have a great little banner maker. They have a free trial for you to download (1.95 meg) I use an earlier version I picked up off the front of a computer magazine a while back...

Banner making really is very the stitching together of several different images so they change and rotate to give an illusion of movement etc. To this end I always find it best to make the initial images in photoshop (or something like that), then use a program designed just for the final 'stitching' job at the end. Making a banner straight in a lot of those programs leaves you with something a little less than impressive..

Greg Moore

[Frosty]

I`ll try all of your sugggestions. Hopefully my banner won`t turn out too handicapped looking. :)

[Frosty]

Hey akashik!

I just downloaded the free trial for that banner maker. That thing is perfect, i really like that pogram for banner making.

I`ve got just one final question: Is it true that you should always use quotation marks with your HTML? Like for example:
(table border="1" cellpadding="5") or can i just go like this (table border=1 cellpadding=5) ?????

I read somewhere that you should always use qoutation marks otherwise something bad happens, i don`t remember.


:confused:

[Tommy]

As a general rule, always try to put them in to make sure your code is nice and neat and conforms to all the standards.

When you're working with html in other scripts such as ASP then the quotations will have to be changed to double i.e. ""5"" or not used at all.

Tip for banners advertising hosting companies:
Try to include as much information as possible. The most successfull hosting ads have always had lots of info about plans and prices. :)

[akashik]

frosty,

The selteco one? It's good isn't it! :) The plugin things for the special effects are great too.. Be careful with them though - I once made a fantastic banner that shook, rattled and rolled. Sadly it was also 100k in size after compression and optimization :) Only about 10 times the industry standard...

Greg Moore

[Tommy]

Hmmm, this selteco sounds quite good. I might have to download it and have a look myself.

I've been using the same tools for banners for 3 years now. Photoshop and GifAnimator.

:)

[akashik]

It's pretty cool. I had Ulead's Gif animator for a while but never really liked it. That's a case of bloatware in my eyes. This is nice ans small, clean to use, and can whack a bunch of premade images together in under a minute. Just select them, order them, and select the time each one appears for... Hit preview, then save... all done. :) If you're up to it, just poke a button here and there for extra text, effects and what not. I think my learning curve on the whole program was about 10 minutes poking at things...

Greg Moore

[Tommy]

Frosty,

If you're finding your animations are a bit on the large side then put them through a dieting course at

GIF BOT (http://www.netmechanic.com./GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm)

or

GIF CRUNCHER (http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html)

These are great tools to get detailed animations under the max file size limits.

[Frosty]

Tommy:

Yeah you should definitely download that Selteco banner making thing, then you could easily make all your banners in one program. That program is great. :)

And weird, i didn`t know you could squash your GIF images. I`m gonna check out that image cruncher squasher thing. Thanks, bye. :)

[f5hosting]

Just be careful not to squash em too much or they will look AWFUL! Adobe Image Ready is a GREAT program for this sort of thing and has an animator built in!

[akashik]

frosty,

squashing you gifs involves the removal of some of the colors, thereby reducing the set of 'instructions' it needs to display. The less different colors you have the less the gif needs to display, so the less it 'weighs'.

At full size a gif is usually 256 colors. You can elect to change this down to 128, 64, 32, 16, 8 etc.. If you're very particular you can also remove colors one by one to crunch it even more..

Allen is right though removing too many makes you gif look nasty. I usually try to get as long as I can but stop at around 32 for pictures, or 8 to 16 for plain text (anti-alaised) My banners can be a little heavey at 10-12 k but just scrape in as industry standard for the most part.

Greg Moore

[Davestation]

Frosty,

I make banners simply as the Animated GIFs that come with many probrams. I have the MGI Photosuite and it isn't great but sure enough it has a GIF animator.

[reverian]

There is a couple of specific programs that make creating an animated banner easy. Here are the ones I use:

Fireworks: http://www.macromedia.com
Paint Shop Pro: http://www.jasc.com

The alternative is to use a javascript that will alternate graphics based on time. This will allow you to show a graphic, then after a specified amount of seconds, it will change to another graphic/url/etc... This is effective, and will save on load time. Some unoptimized animated .gif can run very high on download time.

Also, if you use an animated .gif, preload as much as you can before you show the animation. There is nothing more annoying then to watch an animated gif in slow motion til it is loaded. :)

I hope this has helped.

[Delois]

Instead of downloading from particular website, you should use the different graphic and animated software and create your own banner ads. It is the easiest way to create according to your needs. If you download it from particular website, it is very difficult to edit it and make it that fulfills your needs. Another way is that you can hire the professional web designer who can easily create the banner.