http://webreview.com/current/bad/

We try to provide the best animations out there every day at the “Boss Animation of the Day.” Richard Koman

http://www.lynda.com/dwg/multigif.html

Lynda Weinman’s info on making animated gifs. Suzanne Stephens

http://www.wbm.ca/users/kgreggai/html/animations.html

A favorite animations site. Mark Warrick

http://members.aol.com/htmlguru/transparent_images.html

This site explains transparent GIF’s, and you can download Giftrans.exe, to create transparent GIF’s. This lets them display with non-rectangular shapes. Very useful for creating interesting visual effects. Walter Arnold

http://www.best.com/~adamb/GIFpage.html

“The Transparent/Interlaced GIF Resource Page.” Full info and links to download LView, (which is the one I recommend) along with Paint Shop Pro, GifTool, Graphics Workshop, Giftrans, and many others. Walter Arnold

http://www.raspberryhill.com/gifwizard.html

This Web site will analyze your gifs and reduce their size by eliminating duplicate palette colors and many other things. Michael P. McCurdy

http://www.spyglass.com/techspec/tutorial/img_maps.html

Image map tutorial. Walter Arnold

http://www.aolpress.com/

I recently downloaded AOL’s AOLpress, a freeware WYSIWYG authoring tool, and tried its CSIM tool. It’s great! It writes all the code, while you’re mapping out the spaces on your image. No glitches either, as far as I can see. Roger Scime

http://www.killersites.com

See if you can get “Creating Killer Web Sites” by David Seigel. I had a great time reducing some file sizes from 72K to 33K using his tips. Michael P. McCurdy

http://www.lynda.com/coloring/

Lynda Weinman’s book “Coloring Web Graphics” goes into great detail on all the intricacies of coloring Web graphics so they work well on all platforms. It includes some valuable tips on coloring animations. Check it out! Suzanne Stephens

http://www.photodisc.com

PhotoDisc is one of the best resources for stock photography on CDrom. Their site offers 50,000 high and low res. downloadable images, plus free samples of PhotoDisc's new series of GIF and Shockwave animations. Arie Slob

http://www.webreference.com/dev/graphics/

“Optimizing Web Graphics,” an expanded version of an article published in “Web Techniques,” Dec. 1996 Andy King

http://www.webreference.com/dev/gifanim/

“Optimizing Animated GIFs,” an expanded version of an article published in “Web Techniques,” June 1997 Andy King

http://www.webreference.com/dev/gifanim/

BoxTop Software, Inc. is offering a free trial version of GIFMation 2.0. Here’s what they say about it: “ [GIFMation] has animproved interface and advanced features such as onion skinning, precise color control and pallette reduction.

GIFmation can import several different graphic formats including, PhotoShop (full layer support), TIFF, PhotoCD, GIF, JPeg, Quicktime, and PICT, thus eliminating the need to convert graphics to GIF format before use.

GIFmation offers every conceivable option for handling the animation process, yet remains simple for the novice or the advanced Web designer to master. Power, control, speed, and ease of use are the most notable features of GIFmation which must be experienced to appreciate. Anyone creating animated GIF's should consider GIFmation.” Andy King

[Editor’s Note: both my husband Dave and Joe Gillespie have tried GIFMation and love it. GIF animations are about all we’ve been doing for the last six months, so Dave should know what he’s talking about.]