How does an animated gif file work

Natural language processing NLP is the ability of a computer program to understand spoken and written human language. NLP programming automates the translation process between computers and humans by manipulating unstructured data words in the context of a specific task conversation.

View Full Term. By clicking sign up, you agree to receive emails from Techopedia and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. An animated GIF is an image encoded in graphics interchange format GIF ,which contains a number of images or frames in a single file and is described by its own graphic control extension.

The frames are presented in a specific order in order to convey animation. An animated GIF can loop endlessly or stop after a few sequences. The GIF design allows users to define new blocks. In the s, Netscape designed the Netscape Application Block, which indicates that the file is an animation and not a static image.

This was first supported in Netscape 2. It is still in wide use today. An animated GIF is a popular type of digital image. Animated GIFs are often used for banner ads, in place of much larger full motion video files, and as interesting accents to homepages. Due to the standards of this format, an animated GIF must use an 8-bit palette. That palette size results in only having colors available for the image, but also means that most GIF images take up much less memory than images in other formats.

An animated GIF works in the same way as traditional cartoon animation. The image file actually has multiple images stored inside of it, called frames. The frames are displayed in order, and can give the appearance of motion in the same way an animated cartoon does. A Flash movie from our fuel cell article. Flash and Director are designed to be fairly easy and fun to use -- they both have a straightforward interface and many automated tasks. The two programs handle movie creation somewhat differently, and they have different names for almost everything, but they share some basic components.

To make a movie, you need to manipulate the movie elements in three different ways. You need to:. Flash and Shockwave both have a means of importing, generating and editing movie elements. In Flash, you store these elements in the library ; in Shockwave, they go in the cast. In both programs, you assign these elements any dynamic characteristics and arrange them on the stage.

The stage represents what will actually appear in the final movie. Using the stage, you create key frames that you position in sequence to layout the movie. In Flash, the area for arranging your frames is called the timeline , and in Shockwave it's called the score. One reason you see so much Flash animation on the Web today is that it is surprisingly easy to generate. The Flash program, as well as Director, puts a functioning animation studio right on your desktop, and automates a lot of the complex tasks involved in multimedia.

If you want a globe to roll from one side of the screen to the other, for example, you don't have to animate every frame of the globe as it moves along; you simply tell Flash where the globe starts and where it stops and assign it a rolling motion in between these frames.

For a good introduction on how to make Flash movies, check out Webmonkey's animation tutorial. A Flash animation from our engine article. The next big thing for Web animation is 3-D Web graphics. This gives Web users another level of interaction with online content. In 2-D animation, the Web designer decides what you see, just as animators decide what you see when you watch cartoons on television.

In 3-D graphics , you can actually access a 3-D model, so you control the display. You can turn the model around, activate certain functions, and in some cases actually alter its dimensions.

How Stuff Works has featured a few 3-D models of this sort. There are already a number of companies that have developed this software. Viewpoint has had some success, and NxView has a plug-in available on their site. Users will be able to add 3-D to their Shockwave players by simply downloading an update. Intel chose to work with Macromedia on this project because of the success the company has already had with disseminating multimedia players.

The companies hope that the Shockwave 3-D format will become the Web standard for 3-D graphics. The Shockwave technology has a way of scaling 3-D graphics so that they work well with different connection speeds. Basically, if you have a slower connection, the Shockwave player will download a model with fewer polygons , the geometric shapes that combine to form a 3-D model.

This means that you'll lose some detail, but you won't lose any image clarity or fluidity of movement. This 3-D Web technology allows for all sorts of interesting site content. One of the most promising applications is in e-commerce. Instead of choosing products based on still pictures, online shoppers will be able to look at the object from every angle, as they would if they were shopping for the object in a store at the mall. Some sites are also using 3-D graphics to create "virtual dressing rooms.

This technology can also add a new level of content to educational sites like How Stuff Works. We have already published a few articles using 3-D graphics generated by NxView, and we plan to develop more 3-D content in the future. These graphics let users get a clearer picture of technology and processes -- they can look at an engine from any angle, just as if an actual engine were in front of them. This technology is really amazing, and it will most likely revolutionize the look and feel of the Internet, just as still pictures and Flash animation changed everything up to now.

In a future article, we'll delve further into how this technology works and what it can do, and focus specifically on what Macromedia and Intel are doing to develop the Shockwave player as the Web standard.

With more and more Web users getting high-bandwidth connection, there will definitely be some big changes in Web animation in the future. One such idea is to make the Web less like a book and more like a video game -- you would access information in a 3-D, interactive world. Another notion is to make it more like television, with lots of high quality animation and video.

It really all depends on what Web designers want to include on their sites, which in turn depends on what Web users want to see. In any case, there is every indication that the Internet will continue to evolve at breakneck speed. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close.

Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. How Web Animation Works.

Web animation has come a long way over the years, many websites include it now all over their site to make it more fun to browse. Evolution of Web Animation In its brief history, the Internet has been constantly and rapidly evolving. Part of this evolution has been driven largely by two opposing forces: Internet authors and readers always want to be able to transmit more elaborate sorts of content over the Internet.

To reach most users, the file size for Web content has to be small enough to transmit quickly over standard Internet connections telephone modems. Animated GIFs " ". Plug-ins In the early '90s, the Internet really started to take off in popularity, and the number of Web sites skyrocketed. Flash and Shockwave Macromedia has had a great deal of success with two closely related formats, Flash and Shockwave. The Difference Between Flash and Shockwave Flash and Shockwave software applications cover a lot of the same ground, and they are produced by the same company, but there are a few significant differences.

Consequently, they have a number of contrasting strengths and weaknesses: Advertisement. Flash files load more quickly than Shockwave files. Shockwave is more versatile. You can create more complex games, more elaborate interactivity and more detailed animation. You can use more types of files with Shockwave.

You could, for example, import a Flash file into a Shockwave movie, but it doesn't work the other way around. Flash is more universal.