Does Java support animated GIFs?
[*] Java 1.0.2 and earlier releases use GIF and JPEG formats, and do not use the GIF89 animated GIF format. (An animated GIF is one that contains successive frames of an image, so when they are displayed in quick sequence the image appears to contain movement). When you display an animated GIF in Java 1.0.2, you will just get the first frame. There doesn’t appear to be any easy way to get other frames from the image. The advantage of an animated GIF file is that there is only one file to download, and it is simple to do simple animations. The advantage of programmatic control over individual frames is that you control the rate and order of displaying them. Here’s a surprise: JDK 1.1 supports the animated display of animated GIFs. For simple animations animated GIFs are a lot easier and lighter-weight than coding an animation explicitly.
