Grafman Productions
slick tricks and cool tools for virtual magicians
Write your own Web pages? Like to make them do magic? You'll be a wizard with the help of Robert "Grafman"Free of Grafman Productions, whose GIF*DOTs give coders an amazing array of fast-loading bullets, blocks, and charts. His trick relies on how browsers scale a GIF: if your page specifies a certain graphic's dimensions, then the GIF can be one pixel--only 35 bytes. It will look like a block when rendered onscreen. Since single-pixel GIFs can be colored or clear, the options are nearly limitless. Pop a few dots for yourself and see how it's done. But this is just one of Grafman's groovy Net tools; MUTT Lite, his freeware Multi-User Domain (MUD) client for Windows, sports multiple connections, triggers, and scripts for campaigning in MUDs. In fact, MUTT Lite is hot enough to have inspired some third-party add-ons. If your taste in other worlds also tends toward graphics, not text, then take a gander at VR World. Here Grafman keeps track of VRML tools, posting tables of features and screen shots to show how the products compare in their output. If you'd like to give your own VR browser a workout, try feeding it the virtual bunny. There's still more to explore in these open vaults, which continue an admirable Internet tradition of freely shared tips and tools. Grafman's a virtual hero. (6/5/96) --M. Carmen Matti
