GIF Construction Set
Alchemy Mindworks' GIF
Construction Set is one of the earliest and most respected GIF animation
tools. Updated almost continuously since 1996, the latest version offers
a slew of great features including an Animation Wizard to make the sometimes
difficult process of constructing animations amazingly easy, and a
Supercompressor to squeeze finished animations down to the smallest possible
file size. It also has facilities to create eyecatching banners and animated
transitions; text shadows; adding transparency to existing graphics and quite
a lot more. GIF Construction Set is also extremely easy to use and the concise
help file includes one of the most authoritative GIF89a tutorials
we've ever found. The latest release is available for 32-bit Windows, but
an older version for Windows 3.x is also still available. Shareware
(registration is a mere $US20)
Ulead's GIF Tools
ULead Systems produce
a wide variety of multimedia tools, and they've gained a very strong following
for them over the last few years. Most web authors find their top-end GIF
tools (including GIF Animator and Web Razor Pro) particularly
useful. But if you dabble in multimedia or video, several others (like Media
Studio Pro or Ulead Video Studio) are also very worthwhile. ULead now make
all their products available as 15-day trialware, and also offer some
useful freeware on their site as well. All products run on 32-bit
Windows. We found that GIF Animator was one of the easiest programs we've
run across for generating banner ads or correcting transparency issues in
animations quickly and simply. You might too.
GifX
GifX first debuted in
late 1996 and introduced the concept of simple, semi-automated animation
to a willing market fed up with the often tedious process of building multiple
images, then chaining them together. GifX (which runs on both Win95/98/NT
and PowerMacs) allows you to create up to 33 exciting animation effects in
a quick, easy-to-use interface. Regrettably, the evaluation version of the
product is distributed as crippleware (ie you can see what
it will do but not save your files). But after obtaining a
full copy ourselves, we do have to say that this $US38 product
is worth its very modest investment. It generates some animation
effects that are completely unique and others that would take a long, long
time to do in any other tool. You can
see 5 example animations
we produced with a few clicks in GifX here. |
