Animated Gifs can be wonderful or they can become a source of utmost irritation -- both for the domain decorator and the domain browser.

An animated gif is a miniture movie reel.

 
The strip above shows a representation of four frames of a movie reel. When put together in an animated gif it works like a flip book to create the illusion of movement.

Creating an animated gif is both easy and an art. Apart from the obvious non-Disney quality to the art, the strip you see here done with a great deal of thought. This is evident in the file size. If an animated gif is executed well you can have a very active fun image with a small file size. If the animation is done with little or no regard for target file size it may be huge and eat up bandwidth -- costing you money and irritating browsers.

The program I use for gif animation is not one I would recommend. The program works well for me but the company is hard to deal with and not very newbie friendly. Hence I continue to use the product (no update required in over 4 years) but I can't recommend it. Below are several links to good or adequate programs.

• Gif Movie Gear
• CoffeeCup Gif Animator
• Gif Construction Set
• Ulead Gif Animator

Between these programs you will surely find one that fits your preferences. They all work. It's mostly a question of comfort. Does the interface work for you? Do you feel good about the company? The kinds of arbitary but oh so important questions one will encounter on any shopping expedition.

If you are looking for free gif animation we have the gif animation links for you.