Just say no. Animation Forget blinking things, spinning things, and scrolling marquees. These were cute in 1995. Today, they distract your visitor from the valuable content on your site. Web surfers are smart and capable and they will make up their mind if your site is good without any counters.
Counters are passe and clumsy.
Anyway, most sites use counters for the Webmaster, not the visitor. You have to have a darn good reason to eject your visitor to another site's content. For most sites, external links are a big mistake. For a trick on using external links and retaining visitors read The Dilemma of Providing Valuable Links . Dead Links are way too prevalent on the Web today.