Make Your Web Page Move!
A Review of gifx
Craig Majaski
One of the most interesting, fun, and productive products has just hit my PC. Gifx is a program that allows you to easily make your own animated GIFs. This is the perfect program for any web designer out there. Having said that, this page might take a little longer to load than normal since I've littered it with animated GIFs.
Gifx isn't the first program released that creates animations to put on your web page. There are other similar programs available. Many of them come packaged with a web design program, which can cost you a lot of money, especially if all you're looking for is the animation program. Its simplicity is what sets gifx apart from the other programs I've played around with. You won't believe how easy it is to throw together an animation. All of the animated GIFs on this page were created in under an hour. Granted, they may not look like anything special since I just reused graphics available to me, but imagine creating your own graphics and then animating them just the way you want.
Gifx has a host of special effects ready to use on any GIF you may have or create. This program specializes in animating, not creating the original GIF to be animated. That means you'll need a separate program to create the GIF initially (Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, etc.). There are a total of 26 different animations available to use. In addition, you can make 7 "still graphic" changes to make alterations to a GIF without animating it. To animate a picture, all you have to do is open it with gifx, then select the special effect you want to use on it. Once you pick the effect, you can then alter the number of frames of animation, pick which direction it animates, and choose how many times you want the animation to cycle through. There are often more options to pick as well, depending on each individual effect.
Once you've animated your GIF you get to preview what it's going to look like. You can make alterations to it until you're satisfied. There's also a cool feature that allows you to see how big the file size is going to be before you save it! If it's too big of a file, simply decrease the number of frames, or maybe you should have used a smaller GIF to begin with. When you're finished you simply click save and your animated GIF is ready to be used! Most of the effects are fairly useful and just plain fun to play around with. You can make some very cool animations with this program, making your web page look like the professional ones in minutes.
Gifx is a program for people who haven't animated pictures before, but would like to do so easily. With just a couple clicks of the mouse you'll have your very own animated GIF in no time at all. Since gifx relies on being simple and easy to use, the options available tend to be scarce. It would have been nice to be able to resize the GIF to your exact proportions right in the program. Since you aren't able to do so, be sure the size of your pictures are correct before animating them. Overall I had a blast playing around with this program, and it's a great tool for those looking to put some animations on their web sites. I'm not easily impressed with most products (as can be seen by glancing through my reviews), but I really like this program. It's about time someone made a program that's not only easy to use, but useful as well.
Additional Animations
Internet Hotel Scorecard
| Product: | gifx |
| Company: | Interdimensions |
| Cost: | $35.00 (Available on their website) |
System Requirements:
Windows 95 or Windows NT,
8 MB RAM,
3 MB available HD space.
There is also a Macintosh version available.
Breakdown:
Ease of Use 5
Quality 4
Concept 4
Interface 5
Overall Score:
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