Adobe ImageReady-Made Animated GIF

[Patient Guy]

I have an animated GIF made with Adobe's ImageReady and it will not run in
a PowerPoint (2003, ver. 11.x) slide as advertised.

Indeed, PowerPoint probably sees it as an image rather than a movie.

I want the animation to run on a mouse click or other user-initiated event.
I don't want it to run in a continuous loop. It could run on slide
opening, but also when I click it. I can do JavaScripts, but I figure
PowerPoint uses Visual Basic and I am less than fluent in that.

Any recommendations are helpful.

Thanks.

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Patient Guy,

The animated gif will only 'animate' when you view the "slideshow".

if the problem is with looping see
http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/animated_gifs/gifs.htm

Cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com
free powerpoint templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc

 

[Patient Guy]

Patient Guy,

The animated gif will only 'animate' when you view the "slideshow".

if the problem is with looping see
http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/animated_gifs/gifs.htm

Thanks TAJ.

I was aware of the need to see the animation in SlideShow mode of PP, and
now the animation runs now that I know about Iteration=1 bug in PP
described in the web page link you provide: I corrected this in Adobe
ImageReady by setting the iteration to run twice instead of once...which
of course it now runs once in PP.

The problem is that it runs when entering/opening the slide and I am
unable to set the animGIF object to run on a mouse click (or other) event.

It would be nice to have the option of clicking a mouse button with an
activated cursor within the slide to start the animation at will other
than it running upon entering the slide (which is acceptable to me as
well).

My alternative is to set the animation on a "iterate/loop forever" setting
with ImageReady, and risk an audience being distracted and annoyed on a
slide containing a continually running animation that can only be stopped
by leaving the slide.

 

[Sonia]

Have you tried inserting the first frame of the GIF as a separate static image
and give the GIF an entrance animation of "appear" on a mouse click? Stack the
animated GIF on top of the static GIF.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com

 

[Patient Guy]

Have you tried inserting the first frame of the GIF as a separate
static image and give the GIF an entrance animation of "appear" on a
mouse click? Stack the animated GIF on top of the static GIF.

That will allow me to start it at will when I enter the slide (i.e., it
stops the slide from running when it is entered), but I can only run it
once.

I would like to be able to start repetitively the animation while in the
slide (without having to exit and re-enter the slide) and whenever I click
on the image (whether static or animated).

 

[Kathy J]

If I am understanding what you want to do, you should be able to set the
static gif to exit and enter whenever you need it by changing your
animations from regular animations to triggered animations. All you need to
do is to set the entrance and exit animations to be triggered by the click
of the object itself. If you need help understanding triggers, check out
"Trigger Happy Animations" on my site.

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com
I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Patient Guy]

If I am understanding what you want to do, you should be able to set
the static gif to exit and enter whenever you need it by changing your
animations from regular animations to triggered animations. All you
need to do is to set the entrance and exit animations to be triggered
by the click of the object itself. If you need help understanding
triggers, check out "Trigger Happy Animations" on my site.

I think we are talking about two different animations here.

I believe you are talking about the features of PP that create and control
animations provided by the application that allow
sliding/fading/dissolving in or out of text and graphics as objects on
slides.

I am talking about an object within PP whose animation is specified
outside any special feature originating with the development of PP. I am
talking about the multiple sequence of images (frames) in the GIF format
(animated GIFs) whose serial presentation is given by the GIF
specification and which can be implemented by any application. PP
implements this in a bug-ridden manner (apparently) and some workarounds
have been offered by experts on this matter. PP can apparently present
without activation of an external server in another window certain "motion
video/paint/bitmap" file formats (animated GIFs)

I am looking for the workaround that allows me to initiate an event (mouse
click) on the object and the action taken is to replay the animation
within the object. PP will run the object once upon slide entry, or
alternatively, if I put the image of the first frame on the slide and
click it, I can make the animated GIF appear and go through the animation.
But I can only do that once. I would have to exit the slide and re-enter
to repeat the process.

What I think PP ought to do is to let me set something like "Object
Action" (what?) when I select the "Action Settings..." command on the
popup menu. I tried "Hyperlinking" back to the slide itself (re-entering
the slide without really leaving), but that did nothing.

I spent some time working on these animations, and before I did, I should
have determined whether PP could actually work with them. Lessons
learned the hard way, I guess.