gifs don't animate at all in Keynote

I don't know that I would call it a glitch, however you can go here and place a feature request.

I am just guessing here, but I would the think the problem with using alpha in Keynote on a .gif is that since there are moving parts, each individual image that makes the .gif is going to need the alpha applied to a different part of the image.

It probably does. You have to make sure that you are getting the whole .gif and not just the first image. Try to drag it to the desktop. Then double click it to open in Preview. You should see multiple images in the Preview sidebar that make up the animation. If you are not seeing that, you are not getting the whole .gif and just the first image.

I am not sure what the problem is. When I get a .gif from Google and drag and drop to the desktop, then drag and drop into Keynote it works perfectly.

Are you using Keynote '08 or '09? What version? What Mac OS are you using? Is everything fully updated?

I had never tried this before so just did a little test. Alpha is not even an option when a .gif is selected. I tried to do the Alpha in Preview and then save it, but that doesn't seem to carry through the .gif either. So the answer to your question is, no I have no idea how to do that. I will look into it a little more and see if I can come up with something.

They won't animate until you view the slideshow, but should there. Also, go to the Inspector>Quicktime Tab and make sure to change the Repeat setting from None to Looping.

When you play the slideshow does the .gif animate through once? Did you select the .gif before trying to change Quicktime settings?

Glad it worked, I was getting worried that there was a bigger problem!