Books on gif animation at Barnes & Noble GIF Animators Guide (with CD-ROM) Gif Animation Studio: Animating Your Web Site Gif Animation Web Magic with CD
barnesandnoble.com

• How do I download the gifs?
• I've got the download part of things licked but now when I look at my gifs they don't move. What's with that?
• How do I make my own gifs?
• What do you use to make your gifs?
• Why shouldn't I just embed the URL of your graphics in my HTML instead of downloading it and saving it on my server?
• Why do you give away these great gifs?
• Why do you even try to give away these horrid gifs?

Downloading gifs for Windows: Move your cursor over the gif you like and right click, choose "save as" from the menu an remember what folder you are saving the file in.
Downloading gifs for Macintosh: Move your cursor over the gif you like then click and hold the mouse button. Choose "save as" from the menu and remember what folder you are saving the file in.

Viewing gif 89a animation: Animated gifs can only be viewed with an animation capable program. Almost all web browsers are animation capable but many paint programs and page creation programs are not. If you've downloaded a gif and it doesn't move in one of your programs try opening it with your browser. (Choose the "open" from the "file" menu and open the gif from the folder that you remembered when you first downloaded the gif). NEVER  save an animated gif with a non animation capable program as they will only save the first frame of the animation and discard the rest. It is safe to transfer gif animation via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) as FTP simply transfers files from one place to another without modifying the file.

Making Animated Gifs: To make an animated gif you will need a paint program and a gif compiler. The paint program is used to create the individual frames of the gif. The compiler is used to combine all of the frames into one file that, when viewed with a web browser, appears to move. There is a combined paint program/compiler for windows 95/98 available from Jasc Software called 'Paint Shop Pro 6.0'. (I have never used this version of this software and I am not recommending or endorsing it. It is available as shareware so at least you can try it before you buy it.)

Tools for animating Gifs: I have used Jasc Software 'Paint Shop Pro 3.11' for Windows 3.1.x or Windows NT 3.5,'Adobe Photoshop®' versions 3.0, 4.0.1 and 5.5 for Macintosh, 'Adobe Illustrator®' 7.0 and 8.0 for Macintosh, MetaCreations 'Painter 5.0' (now owned by Corel) for Macintosh and MetaCreations 'Ray Dream Studio 5.0' for Macintosh to create the actual gif frames. I have used Alchemy Mindworks 'Gif Construction Set (TM) Classic 1.0Q' for Windows 3.1.x and Yves Piguet's 'GifBuilder 0.5' for Macintosh to compile the frames into finished gif files. I have also used the following all in one programs to create and compile gifs: Paceworks 'GifDANCER (TM) 1.0' for Macintosh and Andover Advanced Technologies 'VideoCraft v3.6' for Window 3.1.x which is unfortunately no longer available. (It was one of the nicest, most affordable and powerful pieces of software I have ever used. My Pentium took a nose dive a couple years back and I lost the original copy of the program (I know what you're thinking "What a dummy... NO BACK-UP!" and you're right) but I figured I could download a new copy put in the registration numbers and I'd be good to go. When I visited the developers web site and found that the program was no longer available I was not pleased. It really was one of the best programs I've ever used.

Bandwidth Theft: Calling an image or file from another site into your web page or web site without permission is the equivalent of stealing. People pay money to post different files (images, pages or whatever) on the internet and every visitor to your site (when you do this) is costing someone else money. No, you probably won't get caught and you probably won't go to jail but the practice is simply wrong. Another good reason not to do it on this site is the fact that the image locations will change. Your graphic that loads fine from my server today will not  tomorrow and you will be stuck with an ugly "Image Missing" icon on your page and none of us wants that, now do we?

Why do you give away these great gifs?: A few years ago when 89a gif animation was the hottest thing on the 'net I wanted to know only one thing: "How'd they do that?" I had some spare time so I decided to find out. As I went along learning about the format I ended up with a small collection of gifs that I had created with nothing to do with them. I created this page to see how well I had done. Apparently I had done all right.

Why do you even try to give away these horrid gifs?: (See Above) Did you read it? Ok. Now in addition to that remember, you get what you pay for.

Yves Piguet's 'GifBuilder 0.5' is freeware! It's available for download from Macdownload.com. Just go there and search for "GifBuilder". Make sure you download the one without  the '(F)' unless you like your software en françias.