Enter Swish. It is impressive right from the start. It is tiny - its download comes in at only 950KB - and it's surprisingly easy for a complete newbie to come to terms with it.
With Swish I found that, within several minutes, I had completed the onboard help and made a basic animation. Within several more minutes, I had produced a completely original one, using different techniques, text and approach. I was impressed. I found that I had created two banner advertisements for fictitious companies in the time that it would take me just to get the graphics ready to make animated GIFs using Gif Animator.
Admittedly, these banner ads did not contain high-quality flash-looking graphics, but the text that they did contain moved so attractively that the ads were just as eye catching as GIFs of 10 times the size. My favourite, which contained only three words, came in at a minuscule 701 bytes! This means that the animation would download faster than a motionless two-colour graphic of the same three words.
If you create for the Web at all, you would be well advised to download and examine Swish. The unregistered demo version scrambles all text when it is exported, but animations created prior to registration can be reclaimed after you find that you have a valuable new tool to create snappy-looking Web sites.
Swish makes animating text an easy and affordable task for people on very small budgets. This Australian-made program is a fine piece of work. Very highly recommended.
Swish
Publisher: Swishzone
Price: $US30 download
URL: www.swishzone.com
