Animated gif

**aridzone** · 10 April 2008, 03:49 AM

I do not understand why the html export doesn't support gif files

Xara3D6 and Xara Xtreme Pro v4 both offer export in animated gif!
Animated GIF remains very widely used as many applications are capable of creating the files, and it remains the only animated image format capable of being rendered in nearly all modern web browsers without the use of a plug-in.
I know you can always tweek the html code - but why!

I seem to remember talk in this forum about people disableing flash and
popups altogether. So flash isn't all that!

**covoxer** · 10 April 2008, 06:31 AM

Hi Aridzone,
The main Idea of the HTML export is that you can create a complete web page, or maybe even a simple site, with a single Xar document. Then you just click export and done with it. As you understand, all graphics used in this page or site has to be rendered from within the single Xar file. But you can not insert animated gif(s) into Xar design, right? Animated gifs which can be created in Xara require separate documents, one for each gif. That's why it's not there.

I guess the only way to insert animated gifs to your page design would be to place some kind of placeholder objects and setting the image name manually, somewhat similar to what we have done for easy Flash embedding (manual Flash embedding is much more complex than the image replacement in the exported html). Would such solution suit you?

**steve.ledger** · 10 April 2008, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by aridzone

I seem to remember talk in this forum about people disableing flash and
popups altogether. So flash isn't all that!

I'm one of those weird horrible people who disable everything animated in websites, animated .gif being first on the hit list (and so easy to do in Opera browser

I particularly dislike spinning logo's....
Pop-ups are generally blocked by default in most (if not all by now) modern version web browsers. I am prompted to make a choice (like PM notifications in this forum), but spared the (mostly) actual popup.

However, I agree with John, the simplest method would be to have a placeholder image while building the page in Xtreme. Then simply replace the static placeholder with your animated version (of the same name) when you deploy your site.

**aridzone** · 11 April 2008, 01:29 AM

John

When you say placeholder object, do you mean something built into the program or do you mean tweeking the html and graphics by the user.
I just think to be taken seriously by the website developement community,
Xara needs to support animated gif. This is one hell of a package that can only get better!

**covoxer** · 11 April 2008, 07:06 AM

I meant the conception of GIF embedding, not it's implementation. Yes, you can implement it right now using some text editod with find/replace capability. But if this conception is acceptable, I could implement it in the filter. It would look much like SWF embedding looks now. So you would be able to add a name, like IMG="http://www.whatever.com/something.gif" to the placeholder object and it would use this alternative image name on export.
This would also allow embedding images from different URL's as was suggested on the other thread here, and it would allow embedding of any kind of image, not only GIF, for example jpeg2000 or bmp or tiff or something like this.