You can use the Timelines panel to create and control animation in a Dreamweaver document. In Dreamweaver, you can easily create a timeline animation by adding an object to a timeline and using the Timelines panel to design the animation.

A timeline is composed of a series of frames. Each frame presents a snapshot of what the object in the timeline looks like at a particular moment. You create an animation by changing properties of a timeline object in the animation frames.

You can only add an image or a layer to a timeline. The only image property you can update in a timeline is the image source. You can use this functionality to create a slide show presentation where one image replaces another in the page. You can set several more animation options when you use a layer in a timeline (and there's nothing preventing you from placing other elements such as images or Macromedia Flash movies in a layer to take advantage of these options.) Layer properties you can change in a timeline include the stacking order, visibility, size, and the path that a layer travels.

You can create multiple animations to a web page. You can either add all the animations to the same timeline or create several timelines in a web page. A single Dreamweaver timeline can contain up to 32 individual animations channels—32 layers you can animate in a single timeline.

As you design the animation, Dreamweaver creates the JavaScript code required to make the animation work. Because timelines require JavaScript scripting and are primarily used with layers, timeline animations only work in version 4 or later browsers.

Timelines provide you with great flexibility for controlling what happens in a page and when it happens. In addition to animating objects, you can add a Dreamweaver behavior to a timeline frame to trigger an action that occurs when the playback head reaches that frame. For example, you can add a behavior in Frame 30 to stop the timeline or to go to another frame in the timeline when the playback head reaches Frame 30. For information about adding behaviors to timelines, see the Using Dreamweaver manual or Dreamweaver Help.