A circle. A stack of straight lines. A curved line. A jet-black background. These cryptic geometrical runes are the opening screen at Willing-to-Try.com, an enchanting Web site that showcases a growing cadre of sites using interactive animation to guide users and present complex information.

Select the lines, for example, and you find that they can represent trees, mirrors or rain. Click on trees and a wave of your mouse controls a bird flying through the branches, collecting letters to form words. Grab all the letters in the right order-to spell "elephant," say-and a drawing of an elephant appears, complete with a trumpeting trunk and thundering hooves.