Xmassy themed banner, help me!!!

[Mobius]

Hey guys, my friend wants to add an Xmas theme to his forums, but he isn't particularly great at webdev. How difficult is it to add falling snowflakes to this banner, or perhaps a christmas hat? Or if anyone else has any fancy ideas. Is it easy? Could anyone do it for me? Please...I am a newbie..at everything.

Here is the banner

And here is the psd (whatever that is.

http://www.dol-amroth.net/steve/Current_KoDA_Banner.psd

Any help, muchly appreciated!

 

[Shovel]

PSD is a Photoshop format image. You can draw/cut+paste on some static snowflakes in a imaging package like that; I like Fireworks myself (although Photoshop is the Daddy, just, well, very expensive).

For animation: The only way you can do that and maintain the image quality is to convert the banner to Shockwave Flash and do the animation in there. Animation tends to be annoying though, so I'd stick to trying to create something tasteful with the static version.

Finally, if anyone tells you to add JavaScript snowflakes to the website, break their legs.

 

[MKJ]

I notice he is using a vbulletin forum. A dark one too. Be a bit hard to get it to look xmassy if you ask me. Snowflakes over the whole page maybe. Can't he use a different theme just for the xmas period? Aren't there tons of themes for vbulletin forums?

 

[Maljonic]

It's got a Santa hat on it, what more do you want!

You could make it look a bit frosty, add some stylised snowflakes or something?

Edit: you could use a gif just over the Christmas holiday that has the odd snowflake drifting down, take the boat off and turn the water into ice perhaps and have people skating on it, not animated?

 

[Mobius]

You could make it look a bit frosty, add some stylised snowflakes or something?

Yeah thats what I want? How hard is it? (Can someone do it for me )

 

[MKJ]

I know Shovel gonna go banannas over this but hell putting this script on wouldn't take any time and you can always take it off after xmas.

Pweeettty Snowflakes.

Might use it on my site come to think of it . Yeah on me Xmas page. Makes sense to me.

 

[Maljonic]

That's bloody terrible!

 

[MKJ]

Hehe - Wassa matter with it? Snowflakes look nice. Hell you could make some flying pixies or reindeer etc. Would look luvly .

 

[Maljonic]

Well he said he only wants the banner doing anyway, I for one would get pissed off very quickly if this forum for instance had snowflakes, or pixies, raining down throughout the Christmas holidays. Plus that script has been knocking around for years and years so it looks a bit dated now.

Anyway, I had a quick go in Fireworks, don't have Paintshop/Photoshop, and came up with this jpeg:

 

[MKJ]

After all that you came up with a hat? Am I missing something here? .

 

[SheepCow]

And a snowy background with reindeer!

 

[MKJ]

Yeah but where is father xmas on his sleigh?

 

[Moo]

PSD is a Photoshop format image. You can draw/cut+paste on some static snowflakes in a imaging package like that; I like Fireworks myself (although Photoshop is the Daddy, just, well, very expensive).

For animation: The only way you can do that and maintain the image quality is to convert the banner to Shockwave Flash and do the animation in there. Animation tends to be annoying though, so I'd stick to trying to create something tasteful with the static version.

Finally, if anyone tells you to add JavaScript snowflakes to the website, break their legs.

tbh i would hve said the best way to do it would be some good ole dhtml work with some snowflake gifs inside layers (transparent background) moving slowly down on a path over the image or somesuch.

 

[MKJ]

Looking at the forum again ang imagining Majonic's new pic it looks to be an ideal match. Just the right amount of xmassy feel to it.

Job well done .

 

[Mobius]

Aye thats really nice, cheers mate. I'll show my friend the snowflake thingy too, perhaps he can put that in somehow.

Thanks all.

 

[Shovel]

Anyway, I had a quick go in Fireworks, don't have Paintshop/Photoshop, and came up with this jpeg:

Now that's very good indeed I love the reindeer, very subtle.

As for DHTML animated gif snowflakes ;-)… One fundamental problem is the GIF format. I don't doubt you could do something less horrid using 32-bit PNG, since the edges would could be nicely anti-aliased using the alpha channel transparency, but there's no IE support until next year. Transparent gif's can be persuaded to look ok when handling straight edges, or when you know the colour of the background. With snowflakes you have neither.

Of course, I still find them annoying when they're falling over the whole page though (especially the content text…).