The application opens a floating Window on the desktop rather than a full-size screen. Its interface, completely icon-driven and lacking standard Windows menus, is easy to use but surprisingly nonstandard for a Microsoft product. To the screen's left, GIF Animator displays thumbnails of the frame sequence. To the right, a three-tab dialog box lets you control the animation's properties.

These properties are grouped into Options, Animation, and Image. Under Options, you can control aspects of how your animation is displayed in a browser with choices for dithering method and palette selection. Palette options include using the browser palette, an optimized palette, or a custom palette. Under Animation, you can adjust the animation's height, its width, and the number of loops it runs. The Image tab provides settings for the length of time each frame is displayed and the horizontal or vertical position of the image--if the size-setting under the animation tab is larger than the actual image area. You can load existing GIF images, any image on the Clipboard, or .AVI video files. Although GIF Animator does not provide transition settings or effects, you can drag and drop images into Microsoft Image Composer and manually create effects frames yourself.

Microsoft does not provide phone support for GIF Animator, but the help files are clear, and the company hosts an Internet newsgroup for users. Considering how functional and simple this tool is, I highly recommend it to anyone in need of a GIF animation tool.