Animated gifs on a website :)

[Big Frank]

How are you coming up with 253? I rightclick on the images and properties tells me a figure totally different.

I went to his website and right-clicked on his animation:

[Big Frank]

i hadn't really considered it until you said i haven't got the fastest broadband connection but the page loads within a few seconds

your pelican jpeg is 212kb so i'd thought for an animated gif the size 252kb was ok but i take your point and i'm now trying it again

I think it's taken for granted that on this site we will be faced with large graphics - it is after all a graphics website and I did apologise for the rather large size. Your customers, on the other hand, are on a performance car parts website and anyway with an animation that large they will not see the various slides of the animatyion because by the time they load they'll have moved off to another page. Remember, users do not linger the way you do on your own site.

Until last week for the past 4 years all I had was 128kbs ISDN. I am therefore fairly bandwidth-aware. I now have 512kbs ADSL. Party time!

[Egg Bramhill]

As Availor say's Flash can do this fairly easily. You can view a demo HERE

If you hit the Refresh button it should start with a random image each time. The sequence of display is also random. The swf loads one of 7 jpg's (each about 16Kbs each so it should only take 4 seconds per jpg to load on a 56 Kb dial-up connection)

On BF's point, your animated gif size of 252Kb is a bit large, but if I remember correctly gif files download and display sequentially, so each gif in your file is (252/7 = 36Kb) so as soon as that first 36Kb gif is loaded it displays. (8 seconds on a 56 Kb dial-up connection). However that said it still has to load all the other images etc on your page whilst it still chugs away at downloading this 252Kb gif file. Finally the animated gif route has the BIG disadvantage of only being able to use gifs thus restricted to 256 colours and for photographs not as small as jpg's.

[suunto]

You can use flash and start it with a different frame, or you can just make random frames appear each time you enter your website.
Try the Kirupa tutorials

Thanks very much, looks cool

I think it's taken for granted that on this site we will be faced with large graphics - it is after all a graphics website and I did apologise for the rather large size. Your customers, on the other hand, are on a performance car parts website and anyway with an animation that large they will not see the various slides of the animatyion because by the time they load they'll have moved off to another page. Remember, users do not linger the way you do on your own site.

Until last week for the past 4 years all I had was 128kbs ISDN. I am therefore fairly bandwidth-aware. I now have 512kbs ADSL. Party time!

Frank, what sort of size should i be aiming at if i stick with an animated gif? i've been reading the links from a4hire and Availor and learning from them so hopefully i'll be able to change it soon <bit trial and error, first no doubt>

is it really large? the whole page (and animation) loads for me in seconds, i've set the time between frames but the whole gif loads quickly, i understand what you saying but my aim was not for them linger to see the various slides but rather have a random image each time someone visits the site

[suunto]

As Availor say's Flash can do this fairly easily. You can view a demo HERE

If you hit the Refresh button it should start with a random image each time. The sequence of display is also random. The swf loads one of 7 jpg's (each about 16Kbs each so it should only take 4 seconds per jpg to load on a 56 Kb dial-up connection)

On BF's point, your animated gif size of 252Kb is a bit large, but if I remember correctly gif files download and display sequentially, so each gif in your file is (252/7 = 36Kb) so as soon as that first 36Kb gif is loaded it displays. (8 seconds on a 56 Kb dial-up connection). However that said it still has to load all the other images etc on your page whilst it still chugs away at downloading this 252Kb gif file. Finally the animated gif route has the BIG disadvantage of only being able to use gifs thus restricted to 256 colours and for photographs not as small as jpg's.

thanks Egg, i really am learning as i go, so i appreciate all the help i've been given in this thread and also on this site

[Egg Bramhill]

Suunto,

the whole page (and animation) loads for me in seconds

Yes it will. You've viewd your page numerous times. When you view a web page all the images etc are held in your computer cache (temporary internet files), so the second time you view it it doesn't download from the web server but loads from your computers cache, so it will appear to load in a second as it doesn't have to fetch everything from the web server the second time.

One way of calculating how quickly your page will download is to add the file size of every image on the page (plus any background image). Say this comes to 400Kb's. Now to calculate how long this page takes for a visitor on a 56kb dial-up connection devide 400Kb by 4 = 100. So your site will take approx 100 seconds to download in full. Far to long. You cannot ignore dial up visitors.

[suunto]

Suunto,

Yes it will. You've viewd your page numerous times. When you view a web page all the images etc are held in your computer cache (temporary internet files), so the second time you view it it doesn't download from the web server but loads from your computers cache, so it will appear to load in a second as it doesn't have to fetch everything from the web server the second time.

One way of calculating how quickly your page will download is to add the file size of every image on the page (plus any background image). Say this comes to 400Kb's. Now to calculate how long this page takes for a visitor on a 56kb dial-up connection devide 400Kb by 4 = 100. So your site will take approx 100 seconds to download in full. Far to long. You cannot ignore dial up visitors.

Thanks Egg,
your right, i can't ignore dial up visitors, i really didn't realise it was too big, when Big Frank said it was too big, i went into internet options and deleted the temporary internet files and tried it again. it was still quick so i will change it but at the end of the day my aim was for it display a random image each time so i will give the java a go, thanks again

[Big Frank]

Your file size is almost just an aside. I think the conclusion of this thread is that you are certainly using the wrong tool for the job. If you want to display a random image every time somebody loads your home page an animated gif is not the tool for the job. I would use PHP, Javascript or, as a last resort, Flash, but never GIF.

[AntonyF]

Suunto, do you want the images to rotate once on the page? Or are you happy with each time somone visits they get a random image?

[suunto]

Suunto, do you want the images to rotate once on the page? Or are you happy with each time somone visits they get a random image?

Hi AntonyF, my aim was to get a random image display, each time someone visits my site