HOW TO MAKE A "FLIP BOOK" ANIMATION
Entrance supports "flip book" animations: To make one, you simply load tabs with queries, set up the animation parameters, then select "Animate" from the View menu. Reading tabs from left to right, Entrance will display each open chart briefly for a "flip book" effect.
This note provides step-by-step instructions for making an animation using sample data extracted from our web site log. The same technique would work for any of the other chart types including line charts, bar charts, and so on. These sample scripts are simplified versions of scripts we have actually used.
THE SAMPLE DATA
The scripts and sample data you need for this example are here: http://dbentrance.com/howto/Animate_files/animate.zip To get started, download and unzip the file, then add the resulting file directory to the Entrance tree using Entrance | Add File Folder.
Import the CSV data file into a table using the Tools | Import ... tool set for CSV format with column names on the first row:
OPEN AND ANIMATE THE QUERIES
Next, open the scripts a0.sql, a1.sql ... a9.sql from the Entrance tree. Highlight them all, then right-click (Ctl-click on a Mac) on them to bring up the popup menu. Select "Open SQL files...":
Finally, select the View | Animate
menuitem to see the animation. That's all there is to it!
MAKING YOUR OWN ANIMATIONS
The queries you animate don't have to be special in any way. You can even include text reports and table view in an animation if you choose. Generally speaking, the chart frames in different queries will line up if use the same scales and chart settings for both: the idea is to make this easy.
You can also change the delay between changing tabs in an animation and other settings from the View | Animation settings... dialog.
MAKING YOUR OWN ANIMATIONS
The queries you animate don't have to be special in any way. You can even include text reports and table view in an animation if you choose. Generally speaking, the chart frames in different queries will line up if use the same scales and chart settings for both: the idea is to make this easy.
You can also change the delay between changing tabs in an animation and other settings from the View | Animation settings... dialog.