Animated gifs on a website :)

**suunto** · 10 October 2006, 06:09 PM

hi all, i've made an animated gif of subarus in xtreme to add to the index page of my website.
The idea i was hoping to get, was the cars would be random whenever anyone looked at the site but it always starts from the first cars (frame) and each set of cars is displayed after that at the time frame i've set

is there anyway to get it so instead of the first frame always showing, it might happen to come in on the third frame or any other frame ..........as if the animated gif was working all the time and it just depended on when the site come up on your browser as to what frame it fell on. hope that makes sense

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...acing/ets1.gif
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...acing/ets2.gif
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...acing/ets3.gif

**a4hire** · 10 October 2006, 06:14 PM

An animated gif file will always start with the 1st frame so it will always look the same.
You probably need to find a java script or applet that will display random images.

**Soquili** · 10 October 2006, 06:14 PM

I don't know of a way to get a single animated gif start on a random frame.

I do know that you can use javascript and using multiple animated gif files you can randomly select a file to start and randomly select another one to begin when the first and subsequent files end.

I don't have any sample code for that at this time.

A search on google will probably return several results about how to do that.

EDIT: Looks like Bruce where there with good advice before I was

**Big Frank** · 10 October 2006, 06:21 PM

Holy mother of Kazan, how big are those gifs???

I just checked. 253Kb... a little large for an index page opening graphic, don't you think?

**suunto** · 11 October 2006, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by Big Frank

Holy mother of Kazan, how big are those gifs???

I just checked. 253Kb... a little large for an index page opening graphic, don't you think?

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

Thanks very much A4Hire, i really appreciate the link and the offer of help if needed

**-=Drifter=-** · 11 October 2006, 01:14 PM

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

**Availor** · 11 October 2006, 01:49 PM

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

**Big Frank** · 11 October 2006, 01:58 PM

Originally Posted by -=Drifter=-

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** · 11 October 2006, 02:04 PM

Originally Posted by suunto

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** · 11 October 2006, 03:09 PM

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.