animated gif

I too would like to know why Mail does not play animated gif's in email messages. It's very awkward and silly to have to open with QT to view what should just play within the messages.

Any ideas out there?

I for one am happy it doesn't 🙂 But to each his own.

Well....any ideas yet? Seems kinda ridiculous that mail is not capable of displaying animated gifs properly. EVERY other email application (Entourage, Outlook, etc.) does.

This is a pretty serious deficiency Apple!

I would like to know also how to SEND an animated GIF to someone else so that they can watch the animation.

What isn't obvious from the original message, nor the other ones since then, is that Apple Mail can and does in fact show GIF animations. I receive them from others but I cannot send one that will work in Mail.

It must have something to do with some HTML that you send along with the GIF file.

I remember receiving some animated GIFs back in 10.3.x, and being able to see them animated, but was NEVER able to forward them to others so they'd receive it the same way in Mail. STILL can't...but now I can't even see the animation when I open such files in Preview, unless I open the "drawer" and hold down my "down" cursor to watch it scroll the frames. Why are animated GIFs such an impossibility?

[ Edited by Apple Discussions Moderator ]

Carlos,

EXACTLY!!!!!

Why is this sooo difficult for Apple to implement?

It is kind of embarrassing...

OK, Someone forwarded an animated GIF to me. I could not see it using OSX Mail.app, but I am able to view it in a webmail reader using my (work) Windoze 2000 IE6. I forwarded the AniGIF using mail.app to someone and they replied keeping the aniGIF in the message, and I can still view it on the windoze piece of crap. I have had to use GraphicConverter to view AniGIFs on the Mac, and Apple has a tech note on using Preview here <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Preview/3.0.1/en/pv18.html>

Even though you don't see the animation in Mail.app, the file is still intact, just that the other integrated images are not visible.

Apple needs to solve this little issue.

If I never saw another animated gif in an email message, it would be too soon.

Email was not intended for this.

Check Why HTML in E-Mail is a Bad Idea.

Jerry,

Alas, that "tech note" of Apple's (which is only the exact same item as when one looks up "animated GIFs" under Preview's "Help" application) is WRONG, at least as it behaves on MY Mac G5. When I open an animated GIF in Preview, it just sits there, UNanimated, displaying only a single frame. Sure, when I "click the triangle" in the file's "drawer" it reveals all the frames of the GIF, yet it's still NEVER animated. AND, of course, Mail will not display the animation of Animated GIFs. Suffice to say that I concur with your assessment regarding Apple's responsibilities towards this issue.

Carlos

Jerry,

My main frustration with Mail's inability to properly display or handle Animated Gifs is that when I send such a file to others (who, by and large, are on Windows PCs), they too cannot see any "animation" (but why would they, if I, the sender, couldn't see as much?).

Carlos

Allan,

Indeed I agree (as per your link about the evils of HTML) that Microsoft has foisted such clunkiness upon the world, however... as a Mac user, I'm TIRED of not being able to view particular yet ubiquitously common and available graphics formats such as Animated GIFs.. in Mail! It cannot be "rocket science" to enable Mail to routinely handle this sort of thing. Are the concerns regarding such capability due to fears that it would leave Mac's UNIX-based system open to viruses, etc.? If that's the case, I'd love to know about it. However, as an End-User, my desire for Mail to comprehensively address ainmated GIFs is simply a natural expectation.

I'm not sure where the problem lies or how to resolve it but I experience no problems when receiving animated gifs but I prefer that I didn't receive them.

If this is the most important/number one issue for you, there are other email clients available for you to use but there are none without their share of problems.

The problem is:
before aniGIF worked in mail (for me...)
Now they don't.

I have discovered a way to forward animated gifs. You can use the append feature instead of forwarding normally. The append feature can be accessed via the Edit menu (Append Selected Messages) or via the append button (file icon with quotes). You can only do this with something that comes to you from someone else—you select the message and 'append' it to the one you are sending out. For some reason, the animation is present when you do it this way and not when you forward normally. I have no idea why, or why you can't just put an animated icon into any email you wish and have it work. Seems pretty basic to me.

The real question, after reading through the many posts on this subject:
Is anyone at Apple reading these posts? I talked to a tech guy at Apple today, and the best he could suggest was to use a different e-mail program! I actually use Eudora, and I can turn animated gifs off and on at will, but I have clients who want to add small animated gifs to their e-mails, and I'd like to give some reasonable answer about why they have to switch to another program.

Yeah, it's not a big thing, but why should the premier graphics platform have such a dumb limitation in it's e-mail program?