Hi pennsteve,
pennsteve wrote:I dont think Ive seen this question. Can I use an animated gif as a background on an 800X600 frame? Can animated gifs even be made that big? I know nothing about animated gifs.
GIF files tend to be small in comparison to other image formats, but the main caveat about using GIF files is their limited color palette. GIFS only support 256 colors. Sometimes that is enough for an image but sometimes it is not. If you have an image with faded shadows or graduated, continuous, or muted tones, then a GIF may not be your best choice.
For images that are rich in a variety of colors, JPEGs are the best solution because they support up to millions of colors, but can also maintain a small file size. Bitmaps can support a variety of colors but are hard to reduce in file size; they are usually about 1.4MB in size for an 800 x 600 image, even if the image is all black! a Bitmap's file size is set by its dimensional size, while a JPEG is not. A JPEG varies in file size depending on the quality you want.
And like Juhu said, you can use the Animation Maker plugin to help you with animating these files.
Well, hope that helps!