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Zmmyt

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 6, 2005
1,760
879
Hi,

I'm not sure if it's called "Preview", the standard program for viewing pictures in Tiger. But when I open a .gif file with, for example 36 frames, it won't play the animation. I can select every frame but it won't play the whole animation. I already checked the Help menu, but it didn't work. I can drag the file to Safari, but that's not the way I want to view .gif files.

Any suggestions?

-THX
 
I've just been opening them in quicktime

Tymmz said:
Hi,

I'm not sure if it's called "Preview", the standard program for viewing pictures in Tiger. But when I open a .gif file with, for example 36 frames, it won't play the animation. I can select every frame but it won't play the whole animation. I already checked the Help menu, but it didn't work. I can drag the file to Safari, but that's not the way I want to view .gif files.

Any suggestions?

-THX
 
Xephian said:
I just drag the GIF over to the Safari icon in the dock for Safari to animate it.

Okay, that's pretty simple. Something I can live with, but too bad it doesn't show in Mail. Maybe its better, that something won't automatically start playing. For security reason, I don't know.

I'm using a Mac for three month now and that was the only thing that pissed me really off. But the "drag to Safari icon" is okay.

Thanks.
 
Yea, I have the same issue. I hate how .gif's are not animated...real bother to me. As for opening in safari, I dont really like it but...what can i do but complain?? sigh....
 
We can nod our heads that Preview should let you display the animation.

Apple doesn't have a Preview feedback page, as they do for some specific applications, but you can make your suggestion at the Mac OS X feedback page.
 
Doctor Q said:
We can nod our heads that Preview should let you display the animation.

Apple doesn't have a Preview feedback page, as they do for some specific applications, but you can make your suggestion at the Mac OS X feedback page.

Thanks for the tip. I wrote them a letter (like a couple thousands too), but I'm afraid we need to wait for the next OS.

But that's alright with me, I live with 4 others in a shared flat and they love to get hands on my sweet little PB, like myself. It's my only machine and it didn't give me anymore trouble than my Windows box. I'm more than pleased with Apple.

Doctor, what do you use for viewing gif animations?
 
Doctor Q said:
We can nod our heads that Preview should let you display the animation.

Not sure about that. Preview is just a graphics app, and even Photoshop Elements (which can create/edit animated gifs) will send you to another, html-based application to view actual animation.

Mail on the other hand, is obviously html-enabled and should display animated gifs, but that's been broken apparently. It used to be able to. I have emails in my sent folder from awhile ago that contain animated gifs that I can still see as animated in Mail when I pull them up, but creating a new email and attaching an animated gif doesn't work anymore.

By the way, Textedit, which can read/write html, will display animated gifs without problem. I think this is more of a Mail issue.
 
steelfist said:
there's a program called xee, search for it on http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/. it is a pretty good preview alternative. very simaler to windows "preview".

Great program.

Is there a way to keep the old icons. When I drag a file from mail to my desktop it automatically becomes this ugly Xee icon.
 
Just came across this. I'm running 10.3.9, so I don't know if this also works in 10.4, but if you go to "Customise toolbar" under the "View" menu in Preview, you can add a "Play" button to the toolbar. When you open a .gif in Preview, you can then click the Play button to see the gif animate. :)
 
PREVIEW WAS ABLE TO PLAY .GIF'S IN PANTHER

Seriously, I thought I was just stupid or something and couldn't find the "Play" command anywhere, but I guess they just completely ripped the feature out! That sucks!
 
Mr. Mister said:
PREVIEW WAS ABLE TO PLAY .GIF'S IN PANTHER

Seriously, I thought I was just stupid or something and couldn't find the "Play" command anywhere, but I guess they just completely ripped the feature out! That sucks!

That does indeed suck.

I'm glad I said I was running Panther now, or I would have confused a lot of people!
 
Lau said:
Just came across this. I'm running 10.3.9, so I don't know if this also works in 10.4, but if you go to "Customise toolbar" under the "View" menu in Preview, you can add a "Play" button to the toolbar. When you open a .gif in Preview, you can then click the Play button to see the gif animate. :)
Hmmm... I don't see a Play choice when customizing the Preview toolbar under Mac OS X 10.4.5 (Preview 3.0.4). And the slideshow feature shows only the first frame, not letting you show the animation or go in sequence through the frames.
 
Doctor Q said:
Hmmm... I don't see a Play choice when customizing the Preview toolbar under Mac OS X 10.4.5 (Preview 3.0.4). And the slideshow feature shows only the first frame, not letting you show the animation or go in sequence through the frames.

yeah, for whatever reason they took the entire option away in tiger. in 10.3 the "customize toolbar" and add play button was there. i was really buggered to see it missing in 10.4. i wonder why they did that.
 
i would suggest an alternative to preview. XEE is a nice image viewer app that works wonders. i can just double click on one file and be able to view all pictures in the same folder it's in like...microsoft's picture viewer... it's a great program, it's automatically resize capabilities are good, and i find it quite nice. the only problem is it's ugly dock icon so i replaced with something else.

now, i don't mind having preview have that kind of behavior. it actually helped me on my precalculus project on standing waves, and helped me on some levels of frvade, like the earth wind fire water level.
 
Yes, I just "upgraded" to Tiger and am continually disappointed by the downgrading of applications, I thought that upgrading meant more functionality not retrograde steps. I hate having to find different ways or apps to do things that I find normal in a previous OS (QuickTime Pro 5 ((joining .mov files)) and PictureViewer ((resizing .jpgs)) from OS 9 spring to mind). Also as an extra gripe QuickTime 7 won't play .swf files anymore, only realplayer does this and badly.
 
I have to say I'm very Impressed with Xee app

I had an app just like it for windows (AcDsee)

I looked and looked all over the net for an application to play Gifs as they should be, completely ignoring anything from versiontracker (i thought that was a spam/spyware site for some reason)

Never again


Now I can quit using iPhoto and having it automatically add random photos that should not be together in "events" and ****

The reason I switched to iPhoto from Preview is that it had the ability to scroll through pictures (in albums) which I also missed

Now I can go back to having Folders for all my photos and make my albums my way

PS. If anyone else has trouble Sorting photos or anything, use renamer4Mac, it's free and re-names large amounts of files with ease

I add prefixes to every category of photos before importing to iPhoto so that "smart albums" will pick it up
 
hi, sorry to dig up a dead thread from the grave but i found it via google when i was looking for ways to animate gifs automatically when opened.

if you go to "get info" for any gif file, go down to 'open with' and select your favourite app that can animate gifs (safari, firefox, quicktime, etc). make sure you select the 'use this application to open all documents like this" by clicking 'change all'. that way, every time you open a gif, it doesn't open in preview but in another, more gif friendly app.
 
We can nod our heads that Preview should let you display the animation.

Apple doesn't have a Preview feedback page, as they do for some specific applications, but you can make your suggestion at the Mac OS X feedback page.

Preview has never shown animated gifs. It shows the frames of the gif in a drop-down, but it won't animate and loop on it's own. It's ridiculous.
 
Animated .gifs

hi, sorry to dig up a dead thread from the grave but i found it via google when i was looking for ways to animate gifs automatically when opened.

if you go to "get info" for any gif file, go down to 'open with' and select your favourite app that can animate gifs (safari, firefox, quicktime, etc). make sure you select the 'use this application to open all documents like this" by clicking 'change all'. that way, every time you open a gif, it doesn't open in preview but in another, more gif friendly app.


For me this is not a dead thread. Working on a brandnew iMac for a week now (after more than 20 years on pc) and loving it, except for this. The option "change all" is in grey and simply doesn't work! HELP?
 
hi, sorry to dig up a dead thread from the grave but i found it via google when i was looking for ways to animate gifs automatically when opened.

if you go to "get info" for any gif file, go down to 'open with' and select your favourite app that can animate gifs (safari, firefox, quicktime, etc). make sure you select the 'use this application to open all documents like this" by clicking 'change all'. that way, every time you open a gif, it doesn't open in preview but in another, more gif friendly app.


For me this is not a dead thread. Working on a brandnew iMac for a week now (after more than 20 years on pc) and loving it, except for this. The option "change all" is in grey and simply doesn't work! HELP?

I've switched to Xee for an image browser on my macs. It's not as bulky/crappy as Preview. I'll never understand OS X's idiocy when it comes to displaying GIFs. I mean, you can even "quick look" videos but not GIFs? :rolleyes:

Anyway, I'm not sure what's up with you not being able to "change all" but sometimes it's quirky. You may need to select something else (another application) then reselect your actual app choice to activate the greyed-out change all option.
Do you have read/write privileges on other system things? If so, have you tried the ubiquitous reboot?
 
THANKS. Quirky indeed this turning to "other programs" but it works.
 
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