Tips on using animated gifs to liven up your website,
Tips on using animated gifs to liven up your website, with an eye to efficiency!
Animated gifs are the easiest way to put life into your web page. They are easy to create, and most major and a few minor graphics packages support animated gif creation. Three dimensional graphics programs will also come with a movie creator that creates 3D animated gifs. These gif movies are well represented throughout the net. Gif animations are often used for logo and button animation, and banner or small panel advertisements. They have been available for use on the net for over a decade and continue to be found on even the most sophisticated sites.
Animated gifs are merely a sequence of images contained in a file. The animated version of the file starts with a header containing the name of the file and the screen dimensions in which all other images will appear. You can set the background for the animation and a global or sorted palette.
Following the header record may be a loop command record. When a browser plays the animation it will continue to replay it if a loop record appeared, returning to the loop record after it reaches the end of the file. You can set the number of iterations the loop is to be executed, from 0 to 32737. After the loop completes, the last image shown remains displayed.
Each image is a frame, and each frame is preceded by a control record. Following the file header then, and a loop record if there is one, is the first control record. Each control record allows you to set the transparent color for the frame that will follow. You can also cause the frame not to display until the user has performed some output. You can set the amount of delay between the image and the one to follow it. When the delay is completed, the image can be replaced by nothing, by the background, by the previous image, or it can be left as it is. You select which option is to be preformed. The control record controls only the image that follows it.
Each image can also be conditioned by parameters you set. You can move the image left or up by pixels. You can make it an interlaced image, and you can select a different palette. A block title can also be assigned.
Animated gifs may also be edited, as files. Any one of the records, loop, control, or image, can be edited, inserted and deleted. You can also merge two gifs.
Animated gifs are meant to be animations, not movies. They are best played as a small animation with five to fifteen frames played per second. Stuffing thirty frames into a second of gif playing is possible, but the file will tend to be too large to be efficiently transmitted over the net. If you need movie-like quality, use a movie maker and insert your gif images. You’ll get better compression and faster transmission over the net, although the page playing the movie will require a movie player. For short, simple animations, such as cartoons or moving text, animated gifs are the perfect solution for a more dynamic and engaging website.
