Can't forward animated GIF

[Steve B.]

I posted this a few days ago and drew no response. I'll try one more time.

I'm using Entourage X. I received an attachment with an animated gif, and it
animates in Entourage, i.e. I open the received message and can watch the
animation.

I forwarded this message to myself and it arrived with two jpegs attached.
These appear to be two frames from the 30 stored in the gif.

I then saved the attachment from the original message onto the desktop, and
opened it in Preview, and I can open the drawer and see that there are 30
frames.

I created a new message, attached this file, and sent it to myself and it
arrived with the gif intact, but the gif doesn't animate in Entourage (and
the image is much smaller than it is in the original email). I can, however,
save this attachment and view it in another programme, which is a better
result than when I just attempted to forward the original message to myself.

I wondered if opening the gif in Preview, which doesn't actually _play_ gifs
(you have to manually scroll through the frames), had broken the animation
so I resaved the attachment and sent it to myself again without first
opening it Preview, but it made no difference.

Is there some way to forward this message such the the recipient will see
the animation?

Steve = : ^ )

 

[Linotype]

Is there some way to forward this message such the the recipient will see
the animation?

Steve = : ^ )

Come on, someone answer Steve's question.
I'm dying to know why this doesn't work, I would also like to know why
some GIFs don't work when received from fellow PC users.

 

[mmmmark]

Come on, someone answer Steve's question.
I'm dying to know why this doesn't work, I would also like to know why
some GIFs don't work when received from fellow PC users.

You might try forwarding as attachment, but I can't remember if that is an
option on v.X. This method solves various ills on 2004.

-Mark

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

You might try forwarding as attachment, but I can't remember if that is an
option on v.X. This method solves various ills on 2004.

-Mark

It can be done in vX, but there is no menu command for it, like there is in
v2004. All you need to do is create a new outgoing message and drag the
original massage into the new message window from the folder listing.

If you want to know what is going on, I can explain like this:

Entourage has a relatively simple HTML engine built in that is used for
display and editing of HTML content in 'simple' HTML messages. This limits
the HTML available to fonts, sizes, colours and a few other relatively minor
formatting attributes. This is the limit of what can be _created_ in
Entourage.

However, when a more complex message arrives (something using tables or
frames, for example), rather than failing to display it, the display is
passed off to a more complex rendering engine (the 'Tasman' engine). This
can display 'complex' HTML, but cannot create it.

Now, when your animated GIF arrived it was probably wrapped up in a complex
HTML message (it must have been). The display of the message was passed off
to Tasman, which was capable of animating the GIF for you.

When you chose to forward the message, the new draft forwarded message was
opened up using Entourage's more simple html editing engine. This strips out
all the frames, tables etc that it can't handle (which is why you see
formatting changes). When the message is sent, there is nothing in it to
trigger the passing of the message to the Tasman engine on receipt, and the
internal rendering engine can't animate GIFs.

The work round is to forward the original message as an attachment, which
preserves the original 'complex html', but it may need the receiving client
to open the attachment before they see the animation (this depends on their
client and the format of the original message).

You can create and send original messages with animated GIFs in Entourage
2004, however. You do it this way:

1. create a new word document containing the message you want to send. When
you insert the animated GIF, put it into a word table - a 1 row x 1 column
table will do fine.

2. Choose "send to > mail recipient (as HTML)" from the file menu

3. address your message and send.

Now, recipients using Entourage will receive a complex HTML message that
will be passed to the Tasman engine and have the GIF animated

 

[Steve B.]

Barry Wainwright [MVP] said:

It can be done in vX, but there is no menu command for it, like there is in
v2004. All you need to do is create a new outgoing message and drag the
original massage into the new message window from the folder listing.

I did this, and when I received the message, the image did fill the whole
message window, but still didn't animate. Thanks for the explanation below,
at least I understand why it doesn't work.

Steve = : ^ )

 

[Hugh Watkins]

I posted this a few days ago and drew no response. I'll try one more time.

I'm using Entourage X. I received an attachment with an animated gif, and it
animates in Entourage, i.e. I open the received message and can watch the
animation.

I forwarded this message to myself and it arrived with two jpegs attached.
These appear to be two frames from the 30 stored in the gif.

I then saved the attachment from the original message onto the desktop, and
opened it in Preview, and I can open the drawer and see that there are 30
frames.

I created a new message, attached this file, and sent it to myself and it
arrived with the gif intact, but the gif doesn't animate in Entourage (and
the image is much smaller than it is in the original email). I can, however,
save this attachment and view it in another programme, which is a better
result than when I just attempted to forward the original message to myself.

I wondered if opening the gif in Preview, which doesn't actually _play_ gifs
(you have to manually scroll through the frames), had broken the animation
so I resaved the attachment and sent it to myself again without first
opening it Preview, but it made no difference.

Is there some way to forward this message such the the recipient will see
the animation?

probably server side compression on bigpond.net.au
aol does funny things with graphics too to save space

Hugh W


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http://hughw36.blogspot.com

 

[Steve B.]

Hugh Watkins said:

probably server side compression on bigpond.net.au
aol does funny things with graphics too to save space

Read Barry Wainwright's response in this thread.

Steve = : ^ )