Animated GIFs In Publisher Website

[Mike & Patrice]

We have Publisher 2000 and for the last 2 years or so we use to be able to
just copy and paste animated GIFs onto the page being edited and when
previewing the webpage the animation would animate. Now, any NEW animations
pasted or inserted don't work. It seems the properties of animation go away
once inserted into Publisher. Strange thing is that if we copy an OLD,
working animation from another location within the web page publication
docment it works.
Any ideas what may have changd?

BTW Recently updated part of our Office package to Office 2007 but that
upgraded Word, PP, & Excel. Publisher remained version 2000.

 

[Mike & Patrice]

No there are not other files. We had the same problem when trying to
troubleshoot and even created a NEW test site.

Still stumped.

 

[DavidF]

I do seem to remember that Outlook 2007 no longer supported animated gif
files, so your issue probably is related to installing Office 2007. I seem
to remember it was another 'improved security' thing.

Have you tried uploading the page and seeing if the gif is animated when
viewed on your website? It is possible the animation is only stopped
locally.

You might also try inserting the image rather than pasting it.

DavidF

 

[Mike & Patrice]

David,
Thanks for the thoughts. The 2007 Office package we installed did not
include Outlook. We have tried inserting versus copy & paste without any
luck. Yes, publishing and viewing from the web server produces the same
results - no animation. Keep in mind, only newly added animated gifs don't
animate. The old ones froma few weeks ago still do animate.
We did find one work-around however. After putting the gif on the page,
right click and select Change Picture, then Graphics Manager. In the
Graphics Manager window click Create Link, then "Browse to locate original
file and link to it". Navigate to original file, highlight and click Create
Link. Now in the preview and a published website the animation works. Sure
is a lot of extra work so we would like to find out what got screwed up.
BTW tried running a Repair Office installation with no luck.

 

[Mike & Patrice]

David,
Thanks for the thoughts. The 2007 Office package we installed did not
include Outlook. We have tried inserting versus copy & paste without any
luck. Yes, publishing and viewing from the web server produces the same
results - no animation. Keep in mind, only newly added animated gifs don't
animate. The old ones froma few weeks ago still do animate.
We did find one work-around however. After putting the gif on the page,
right click and select Change Picture, then Graphics Manager. In the
Graphics Manager window click Create Link, then "Browse to locate original
file and link to it". Navigate to original file, highlight and click Create
Link. Now in the preview and a published website the animation works. Sure
is a lot of extra work so we would like to find out what got screwed up.
BTW tried running a Repair Office installation with no luck.

 

[DavidF]

When I mentioned Outlook 2007, I was just using that as an example of how
Office 2007 may be impacting Pub 2000. Increasingly MSFT is taking steps to
improve security and some of these steps have unintended and indirect
consequences. Office 2007 may not be the culprit. It may be a security
patch, or even a setting in IE or your operating system. I was able to
reproduce the issue and use your workaround successfully. Unfortunately I
don't have a good answer for you.

I could not find anything specific about Pub 2000, but MSFT does suggest
inserting rather than copy and paste in Pub 2007: Add an animated picture to
a Web page: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HP102038021033.aspx

At least you found a workaround for now. Thanks for posting that. You might
want to repost your question in the Publisher webdesign group and see if
someone else has experienced this issue and has a better explanation:

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign
or
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...soft.public.publisher.webdesign&lang=en&cr=US

DavidF

 

[Mike & Patrice]

Thank you DavidF,
I was thinking it was some sort of "security" setting issue also. We have
FrontPage 2003 and the animations work fine with that, so I'm almost leaning
towards a corrupt file somewhere in the Publisher installation. I could try
reinstalling Publisher. Thanks for the idea about posting in the other
discussion group. I'll try that first.