14. January 2010 14:20
In the Beginning There Was Animated GIFs
Before the time of Flash and Streaming everything, if you wanted to add a little animated content to your web page without going into JavaScript, you had to use an animated GIF.
Animated GIFs were usually just of a simple concept, such as a spinning CD, or a color changing bar. But they did get more elaborate as time went on. Eventually we would start to see whole animated sequences and scenes from movies. Gifs were created much like actual movies, a bunch of individual pictures were compiled into one moving picture image.
The use of these graphics caused a love and hate relationship between web designers and users. Animated GIFs were great when someone used them sparingly to add a little flair to their page or to emphasize something on the page. But some people went overboard and filled their pages with nothing but animated GIFs. So the page users had to wait for all of the images to load and then once it did load, it was just a huge mess of pictures. The point of the page was lost, unless it was just to have a bunch of pictures. This practice unfortunately made some designers include any use of animated GIFs on the list of bad web design practices.
There is still a ton of animated GIF archive websites. You can find pictures from all kinds of fields, such as the ever-popular animals, business supplies, office tools, computer parts, alphabets, header bars, page buttons, etc.
13130663-e4a8-43a5-84d5-952afa30a0e1|1|1.0