I occasionally create animated gifs to run in IE4, 5 and 5.5 in a
windows 98 environment.  I use Adobe PhotoShop and Imageready 6.0 to
do the work.  Most of the time the gif runs smoothly.  But on a number
of occasions, it seems choppy.  It looks like the moving part of the
animation has an invisible  horizontal line across the frame and it
looks chopped in half.  I recently received a gif from an outside
source that does the same thing.  It works fine in Netscape but not
IE.  What is causing this to happen?  HELP!

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Request for Question Clarification by arlenegreen-ga on 08 Nov 2002 04:01 PST

What kind of compression and frame rate are you using? It isn't
uncommon when creating animated gifs for IE to do this and Netscape to
be fine if you have "optimized" the .gif file. If you give me the
frame rate and compression I can probably help you to make your files
compatible with both browsers.

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Clarification of Question by mlmtf6-ga on 08 Nov 2002 07:39 PST

Hi Arleen,
I'm using the GIF format (LZW compression as indicated in Photoshop
help).  I'm working in a corporate intranet environment, so I don't
have to get it to work for Netscape, only IE4, 5 and 5.5.  I only
tried it in Netscape to see if the problem existed there too.  The
frame rate is .1 seconds.  This problem only seems to happen when the
animation has a backgound in the frame (especially if the background
is not a single color) and it doesn't always happen.
Thanks,
Debby

A quick note, which I might help but I can not test.

Cache might be the problem here. See if you have the cache set to
always check for updates, and maybe try changing to to once a session.
Also, try reducing your cache space? Or clear the cache and see if it
speeds up the animation (might want to restart the browser after
clearing both disk and mem cache).

I had the same problem, but reversed (Netscape was slow sometimes, but
IE was fine always). I wasn't using GIFs, but image roll overs.  I
have found that changing the cache to only once a session, or less,
worked wonders.

Please let me know if I can repost this as an official answer.

Regards,
slawek-ga

Thanks so much for your suggestion but it didn't seem to help.  When I
looked in the options, the only choices I had for cache were "every
visit to the page", "every time you start IE", "automatically" (which
is was selected) and "never".  I changed it to "every visit to the
page", deleted the files including offline content.  When I
redisplayed the animation it still looked the same way.  Did I change
it to the wrong one?

There is a new development.  I went back to the graphic after looking
at the temp files and the animation was running correctly.  I didn't
change anything while I was looking at this folder.  When I restarted
the animation again, it went back to the old choppy way of displaying.
 Now I'm more confused than ever.

Good Day,

Is there a link where I could maybe view the GIF and see if I get the
same results, and try a few things?

The cache should be set to automatically (the other options I
mentioned are from netscape 6.2 I think)...

Regards,
slawek-ga

This graphic is located on the NAPP website www.photoshopuser.com. 
You can only access it if you are a member.  I have it on my hard
drive but don't know how I can get it to you.  Do you know of a way?

Good Day,

Chances are you have some web space with your internet account, and
you can upload it there. If you are unsure how, maybe you have a
friend who can put it online for you for the time being? I really
can't think of much else to suggest to help solve your problem without
seeing the image...

I will keep checking back on your question.  If you are still trying
to get the image online a week or so from here, just post a comment
that you are still working on the image so I don't forget about you
after no activity for a few days.

Regards,
slawek-ga

Hi Slawek,
I don't have a webspace to work with.  I'm working on a corporate
intranet.  Our web presence is not control by the department I work
in.
Thanks,
Debby

Good Day

Unfortunatelly, as researchers we are asked not to interact with
customers off site and there is no way for me to receive the file from
you here in Google Answers. Perhaps you have a friend who can upload
the image into some temporary directory in their web space, and give
you the address?  Unless this is the case, or you have some other idea
on how to share the file with me (perhaps signing up for free space
with GeoCities, or something like that, and uploading it there
yourself?), I am not going to be of much help... (you do have me
really currious, and as a web designer I would be very interested to
finding a possible solution to your riddle)...

Regards,
slawek-ga

The way the problem comes and goes on my PC, especially in the past
couple of days, I have to think it has to do with a performance
problem on my PC.  I've tried it on other PCs and it doesn't seem to
be a problem.  I'm wondering if there is a setting in windows 98 that
has to be adjusted.  I don't think that you will see much by looking
at the graphic on your PC.  But thanks for trying.
Debby

Hi Slawek,
I just found a web page that illustrates the same problem that I'm
having:
      http://www.gemacs.com/Animation/AnimSphere.html
Even thought this graphic is VERY large, I've had the problem on
smaller ones (160kb).  Hope this helps you to see the situation.
Debby

I just discovered a consistancy on the GIFS, that cause this problem. 
They all have a file size that exceeds 70KB.  Although I haven't been
able to find a specific restriction documented anywhere about IE.