Still no support for Animated GIF?

[Martin_SBT]

Eh guys

I just bought AMS5 and i wish we would be November 14 TODAY! :)

Now, i was disapointed to see that Animated GIF where still not supported! Any plan adding that in the future?

thanks

Martin:)

[Corey]

Hi. Unisys owns a patent on the .gif format, we can't use it freely as such. The patent for .gif will expire in June 2004, at at that time .gif support can (and will be) be legally added without risk.

As a workaround, you can serve .gifs via the web browser object if you wish...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[Sneeze]

By the way corey...

many users in the past had asked if they get a "no border option" for the webobject. I still hoped that it was possible with the last 4.05 update... :(

The i noticed the 5.0 beta and was also dissapointed to see that so many sugestions and wishes to this feature did not "touch your hart" enough.

Would your policy allow to give us an statement to get a no border option in the webobject for the future...and if...when?

Sneeze

[Corey]

Hi Sneeze


The i noticed the 5.0 beta and was also dissapointed to see that so many sugestions and wishes to this feature did not "touch your hart" enough.

That's not my decision to make, it's Brett's. That being said please remember not all things are possible when dealing with 3rd party activeX controls such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer. We don't make the ActiveX control, Microsoft does. We just leverage it for us in AMS... We always do our best to give you everything you ask for but realistically time is always an issue in the software development game... :o

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[Brett]

I did look into that issue durign AMS50 development. First of all, getting that to happen from a C++ program is not as trivial as it should be :)

There was a lot of nitty gritty COM programming involved but I was able to get it to happen. Here is the problem: I could only get it to happen on an application-wide basis or at the least a page-by-page basis. There is no way that I can tell to control the IE border onb a window by window basis.

So, in the end we decided to leave it at the time for more pressing more important issues. We may re-visit it in the future but will need to form an intelligent implementation strategy that will make sense and not get in the way of the way the product works and flows.

[Sneeze]

"We always do our best to give you everything "

shure corey, there`s no doubt about :)

[CyberRBT]

Brett:

Re: an option for a borderless WebBrowser control.

Have you considered offering two different versions of the control: one normal and one superclassed without a border (WebNB)?

Just a thought ...

[Corey]

I think the overarching message is that the time spent to build such a thing could be more valuably spent elsewhere at this particular stage in the development... So it's not a n issue of if we wanted to, but it's a task which would take up resources and time which could be invested in other ways right now which seem to be of more benefit to users at large than this single enhancement.

And then in between the lines, is that we are aware of this and as soon as a feasible solution reveeals itself, it will be implemented. But until then it's better as it is...

Hope that helps to clarify the issue a bit. :)

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[aelsharawi]

for animated gif there`s a workaround

you can convert it into .swf using prog like c*ff*c*p html

[Corey]

Yep. You can easily publish to .gif from Flash (Probably Swish too) also. As well you can convert existing .gifs using a variety of freeware tools such as gif2swf http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=gif2swf.

That being said, we do not necessarily reccomend that tool as we have never tested it, user beware, always be careful when downloading/installing software of any type. Use that tool at your own risk.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[AGRO]

"...Unisys and IBM both applied for patents in 1983. Unisys (and perhaps IBM) applied for these patents in a number of countries. Of the places whose patent databases we were able to search, the latest expiration date seems to be Wednesday 7 July 2004 ]{1} Until then, anyone who releases a free program for making GIF files is likely to be sued. We don't know any reason to think that the patent owners would lose these lawsuits. "


Footnote:
]{1} We were able to search the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, but it does not expire in most of Europe until 18 June 2004, in Japan until 20 June 2004 and in Canada until 7 July 2004. We are still searching these databases for the IBM patent.

Source: here (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html) and Unisys (http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw)

[evoman]

Well its coming up on June/July 2004 anybody know the status of the patent being up for gif?? When it is up will ams5 have a upgrade for it???

[Corey]

We'll have to see how it evolves but indeed if the .gif format becomes readily legally available for usage then that's definitely something we'd look at adding in a new build since .gif is such a popular format and that would add ubiquitous animation support. :)

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[Worm]

I'm not sure if I'd use an animated image, but if I did, I'd rather see MNG than GIF anyday.




We'll have to see how it evolves but indeed if the .gif format becomes readily legally available for usage then that's definitely something we'd look at adding in a new build since .gif is such a popular format and that would add ubiquitous animation support. :)

[Corey]

I am tooth-and-nail anti-MNG and pro-GIF. There's no logic (or value for IR) in adding something a small handful of people will use *instead of* something the vast bulk of people would use. Besides, all the MNG proponents seem to preface by saying that they don't really use animations anyhow. :)

There's absolutely no disputing the ubiquity of these two technologies, GIF absolutely dwarfs MNG by thousands and thousands (probably millions actually) of times when it comes to, "What people are actually using in the real world". That being said, it's not my call...

BTW Important to note that MNG has been around for a long time and has failed to gain public popularity. If you recall we had a MNG vs GIF debate in here last summer during which time I made the argument of, "I guarantee you that next summer MNG will be no more popular with the public than it is right now." in rebuttal to an assertion that MNG was, "definitely on the way up." A prediction (mine) which we now know held true. 2003 brought no rise in public usage of MNG. 2004 doesn't seem to be either. Ostensibly one might also then project that 2005 and 2006 might be similar. Sure, it's fun to root for the underdog, but we also have to keep one eye on what the market does.

The salient point being that it's not a guessing game at this stage, we know what the public thinks of using GIF and we know what the public thinks of using MNG, we have a long history on actual usage of both formats which we can review...

Of course GIF has risen in public usage throughout all of the past few years, and appears to be doing same in 2004. BTW To be clear, when I say, "public" I am referring to typical computer users at large, not game designers or IT specialists.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[Robfr]

Well I too was going to see if a non-border web object was in achievable or to embed animated gifs directly into AMS5 but I see this answers my questions.