Gif as background

[pennsteve]

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.

Thanks.

[Mystery]

I guess it should be possible, but animated gifs with that large format would have a big file size (depending on how many frames are necessary to create the animation it could be even some megabytes).

[juhuwoorps]

You have to make a hotspot in the size of the frame. Animated background images are not supported.
You can use the Animationmaker plugin for this. It allowas you to make an animation with other filetypes like bmp,jpg.
So you can reduce the filesize of your animation

[3dgamer]

Hi pennsteve,

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!

[mercedes]

Ya if u use an animated GIF for the background...the user wouldn't be able to interact properly with it..[Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't]

What you can do is just have certain parts of the background animated..so a bird flying..crow in a tree..cat walking by..that sort of thing..snowing..

With the Animation Plugin v.1 and v.2 and the Gif sequence plugin..You can have up to 3 animated gifs on the page..

You can also try Shadow Hunter's new plugin..'Particle' for snow or rain..or whichever..

That would be the way I would go about it..as opposed to having one large hotspot..i would have as many as I could make with the players and with plugins..

Keeping in mind either way you go with the Animation players, if you download some off of the internet, you still have to separate all layers and name them accordingly to fit in the player..so they play in a sequence..

Peace

[pennsteve]

Ok. I'll scrap that idea. The last time I tried to use an animated gif maker, it just wouldnt work.

How about an animated cursor? Is that possible? Like if I wanted to make the cursor look like a hand, so when you clicked, it would make a slapping motion? lol

[Mystery]

Animated cursors are possible with ShadowHunter's new KeyGuard plugin.
Otherwise you can't use animated cursors to my knowledge.

[reneuend]

Yep. Use ShadowHunter's KeyGuard. You will use a series of images to perform the animation.

I suggest looking at the demo project he has created to see how it's done. His manual is good, but it helped me a lot to look at the project code.