Animated ASCII objects

ASCII art computers and keyboards across the library

Computers have their own home in the library, so here is where to find them. Each of these plays, copies as text and exports like any other piece. In this category, Typebar Close-Up shows the mechanical ancestor of every keyboard, with typebars striking the ribbon one letter at a time. For more, browse Retro Computing at Retro Computing and UI at UI.

• School Computer Lab (School Computer Lab): three beige terminals, one listing a program, one compiling and one running a bat and ball game.
• Mainframe Lamp Console (Mainframe Lamp Console): rows of register lamps flicker while the console log prints a nightly batch.
• Teletype Paper Roll (Teletype Paper Roll): a type head prints a session onto a feeding roll of paper.
• Keyboard Keypress (Keyboard Keypress): each key sinks and lights as a sentence is typed.
• Cat at the Keyboard (Cat at the Keyboard): a tabby taps at a laptop late at night.

ASCII clocks for pages, footers and dashboards

There are three clocks here, each with its own character. Analog Wall Clock is clean and brass-trimmed, with its hands sweeping in proportion. Cuckoo Clock is carved and cozy, its pendulum swinging until the little bird pops out on the hour. Pendulum Wall Clock is a tall regulator with a brass pendulum behind glass. They are animations rather than working clocks, so they keep their own time instead of showing the visitor's local time. That makes them ideal as decoration on a booking page, a time-tracking app, a coming soon page or a talk about deadlines. For digits, see Digital Clock at Digital Clock and Nixie Tube Clock at Nixie Tube Clock.

ASCII coffee for cafes, mornings and break screens

Coffee Mug is the simple one: a red mug on a wooden table with steam curling into a warm room. Espresso Machine Pour is the busy one, with twin streams, rising crema, a climbing pressure gauge and steam drifting from the wand. Elsewhere, Pour Over Drip at Pour Over Drip and the Yawning Coffee Mug at Yawning Coffee Mug add a slow brew and a sleepy face. Ideas that work well:

• A cafe or roaster homepage hero, with the mug centered and the menu below.
• A tip jar or support page, where a steaming mug says thank you.
• A morning newsletter header, exported as a GIF.
• An away or break screen on a stream or an office display.

Objects as loaders and waiting states

Many objects already look like progress, which makes them natural loading animations. Hourglass flips itself as soon as the sand runs out, Clockwork Gears turn steadily at their true ratios, Washing Machine tumbles a load and then spins fast, and Desk Fan sweeps from side to side. Espresso Machine Pour, Vintage Sewing Machine, Film Projector and Metronome are tagged as loaders too, each suited to a different brand: a cafe, a craft shop, a video tool or a music app. Embed one in your loading state at a small size, for example size="8" for an 8 pixel font, and hide it when your content arrives.