DesktopX objects don't have to sit still and do nothing; in fact it would be rather dull if they did.

Animating objects is incredibly simple. Animated objects, are made up of frames, and the image for each frame is incorporated into the source image.

The image on the left is a source graphic for an animated object. You can see there are 3 images side by side. You may say, hold on there are 6 images, but this image has per-pixel alpha blending information too.

If you just used this as a source image as you would for a regular object your object would be displayed as shown below.

To inform DesktopX that this is to be an animated option, you must enter the appropriate information on the object's 'animation' tab.

It's all very logical. You enter the number of frames the image contains, and the interval. This interval is the amount each frame is displayed before showing the next.

The style shows the direction in which to play the frames of the animation. In our example this would be as follows:
Forwards: 1,2,3
Backwards: 3,2,1
Forwards + Backwards: 1,2,3,2,1
Backwards + Forwards: 3,2,1,2,3

If, additionally you want to loop the animation, you check the 'loop' box. In our example, this means the frames will animate 1,2,3,2,1,2,3,2,1, ... etc.

The only other option on this screen is the 'Static' option. Instead of motion animation, you can have transparency animation. You choose a single frame image, and fill in the the Animation tab as normal, but also select the 'Static' checkbox.

You then need to go to the Alpha blending tab and amend the 'per frame' info.

In our example, with 3 frames, this will cause alpha blending which varies by frame, 30%, 60%, 90%, 60%, 30%, 60% ... etc.