# Question about web page animations

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-web-page-animations/523594>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 4, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-web-page-animations/523594 "2010-01-04T06:06:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\
**Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-web-page-animations/523594/1 "2010-01-04T06:06:03Z")

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I’m not very good at web design—my skills and knowledge are antiquated and rusty. I’m putting together a simple flash video as a eulogy for someone who died recently. I want to have a butterfly or a dragonfly flying randomly about the page. How do I do that? Can anybody point me to a quick primer? I’m having trouble looking this up myself because I’m not even familiar with the terminology involved—I just don’t know what to Google for.

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**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\
**Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-web-page-animations/523594/2 "2010-01-04T06:14:54Z")

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Have a look here: [http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/index.html](http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/index.html)

(Not Flash, but you want this outside your Flash video, right?)

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**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\
**Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-web-page-animations/523594/3 "2010-01-04T06:18:59Z")

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Right—flying _around_ the flash container would be ideal.

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**Author:** ![\_cc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/_/e19b73/32.png) [@\_cc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/_cc)\
**Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-web-page-animations/523594/4 "2010-01-04T09:27:52Z")

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You could do all sorts of neat things with [jQuery](http://jquery.com/) (JavaScript) combined with an animated .gif. They have several tutorials in the documentation, and you can even see it in use right now (as of this writing!) on the Google front page, where an animated apple drops off the logo in honor of Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday.