IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS of the web, bad design was better than no design. Web designers could consider themselves sophisticated if they knew how to implement tables in web page layout. CGI was not for the faint of heart, but that was O.K., because who really needed that kind of schnazz?

Well, it's 1996, and the heady days of home-grown home pages are over. You can't just have images and text. You have to have video, audio, and animation. Plugins are proliferating faster than any individual can expect to download and use them. The rate of change in interactivity and programming spins your head faster than you can say '$800 for the developer's package.' Exaggeration aside, it's getting harder and harder to keep up with the Joneses these days.

On the positive side, there are tools out there for those with no interest in hocking their family heirlooms in order to develop interesting content for the web. One of the often overlooked options is gif89a animations. Gif89a is an image format that allows blocks of separate images to be included in a single image file.

How do I make a gif89a animation?