Help fight my ignorance, web designers and other gurus, please.
I have made a couple of very simple animated gifs. I have inserted those gifs into a PowerPoint presentation and they work exactly as I had envisioned. But, if I save the presentation to a disk and open it in PowerPoint on another machine, the animated gifs do NOT work. If I attach the PowerPoint Presentation to an email, the recipient reports that the animated gifs do not work.
What am I failing to grasp here?
PowerPoint Help doesn’t seem to cover this and no one at Microsoft is particularly interested.
I don’t have a lot of experience with Power Point. Is it possible that when you save to disk or attach it to e-mail, the file is getting compressed? If that’s the case, it may be that in compression some of the gif’s frames are getting tossed out. I don’t know.
One problem that I had with an animated gif I created a few months ago was that I had specified different delays between frames, like 70/100 of a second between frames 1 and 2, and 1 second between frames 3 and 4. For some reason the irregular amounts of time made the gif freeze about halfway through on anyone’s machine but mine. Weird. The problem disappeared when I set all the delays to be the same.
“It says, I choo-choo-choose you. And it’s got a picture of a train.”
– Ralph Wiggum
Beadalin, the delay times are all equal. These things are so simple (the ones I made, that is) that only five frames are used.
Hardcore, I am using PowerPoint2000 as part of Office2000. I assumed the recipient of the email with the attachment was as well since we work for the same (small) company. I will verify that, now that I know the 98 version doesn’t support animated gifs.
Okay, guys, now I am in the Dilbert zone. I made the presentation as a work assignment, using the 2000 version. My boss checked the work in the 97 version and said it wasn’t what he wanted cause the wigglers didn’t wiggle.
I didn’t know about the differences either but it seems strange that the boss would have a version older than the employee’s. Bosses are supposed to get the newest, latest and best of everything. Aren’t they?
Here’s a little free advice for your boss from a person who has seen a different slide presentation from a different company three or four times a week for 6+ plus years.
Ditch the wiggly stuff. His viewers (customers, prospects, investors, regulators, doesn’t matter) are OK with the “fade-in,” “slide-in” or shaded bullet points. We’re OK with the overdone color scheme bosses always seem to choose. We’re even OK with the 10 minute delay when Mr. “We’re cutting edge and don’t use an old-fashioned slide projector” can’t get his laptop to interface with the hotel’s AV system.
But the wiggly stuff has got to go. It’s distracting and takes away from the speaker’s point. Your boss wouldn’t be happy if one of his underlings stood behind him making bunny ears while he tried to speak. Why does he want virtual bunny ears way up there lit up on the screen?
Manhattan, in general your advice is sound and well founded. My boss and I have been subjected to presentations done by others and we are in general opposed to the various bells and whistles that do not further the project. This particular presentation is part of a training guide for new employees and the wigglers demonstrate the vibrational modes of piezoelectric quartz plates. There are only three of them and they are only a small part of the presentation.
Manhattan, I did not mean to denigrate you or your advice. The question I asked was probably so simple that you were justified in assumming that I was a total greenhorn in this field. And I am green, just not totally.
Cessandra, that is another piece of information I did not have. I inserted the gifs onto a slide and saved the presentation. I had thought that was enough. Living and learning is a lot of fun.
Experience is the best teacher except you get the test first and the lesson afterwards.