Moonless, January '07
How to make an animated gif the easy way.
First you need to get some code. Go here for a good free animated gif editor. If you want to create your own images to animate you will need an image editor. I recommend Adobe Photoshop but it's $600. GNU is a good free one that should allow you to do what you need.
Next create the images. Use your imagination and talent here. You're on your own for this part. Make them each of the same size. Pick a common background color preferably to match the page the image will sit on.
Now lets say we are going to make a super simple animation of just two frames.
Open the Microsoft animated gif editor. It should look like this:
Click on the folder icon and open the last image.
Continue to add the images in the order you need them by clicking on the fourth icon from the left. When you are done click on the "save as" icon (the fifth icon) represented by the multiple disks to save your file with a unique name.
If you want the images to repeat in a loop, click on the Animation tab and check the repeat box. You can tell it how many times to repeat or to repeat forever.
You will notice that if you hit the play icon represented by the black triangle on the far right that you won't get the play you desire.
Mine would look like this:
You can modify how long the browser spends on each frame by clicking on the Image tab and changing the time per frame. You have to modify each frame so go down to each frame and enter the desired duration. My final animated example slowed for 50 milliseconds per frame looks like this:
There are other settings you can mess with like setting up transparency colors that make for more versatile animated gifs.
As this short post is only meant to introduce someone to how to make a simple animated gif, I will also add that there are lots of good resources on the web such as this for a deeper understanding.
