Images
which are in GIF format can be animated. The specific GIF
format which allows for animation is GIF89a.
Creating animated GIFs is really very simple. You need to
create a small GIF for each frame of your animation. This
may result in several GIF files. Then, use a utility such
as GIF
Construction Set (Win95/NT, 1.2MB), to create a
single animated GIF image from your separate GIF files.
This is an example of an animated GIF:
Tips and Tricks
Some tips for creating web-friendly images:
- Make your images as small (in terms of file size) as possible. Large images which take a long time to download and display are very irritating to users with slow Internet connections.
- When inserting an image into your HTML page, use
the width
and height
attributes, i.e.:
<img src="myimage.gif" width="150" height="50">
This causes the browser to display the text on the page before the image has completed downloading, allowing visitors to read the text, and giving the impression that the page loads quickly. - Use a utility such as GIF Construction Set (Win95/NT, 1.2MB) to set the background of your image to transparent. This does not look good if the background of your web page is very busy, and therefore interferes with the look of the image. However, if you have a plain page background, making its background transparent causes it to appear as if it is floating on the page.