Difference between GIF and SWF

[Bornfree]

Hi Guys,

I have created and flash animation. I have been told to create two files. a GIF file and a SWF file!
I want to know, what is the difference between them. I file is 1Mb and the other one is just 80K. Which one to upload?:confused:

[boogyman]

gif is just an image....
swf is a flash movie

[djr33]

Flash movies are programmable and interactive; you can set durations, looping, user-based events, time-based events and respond in a number of ways, as well as parse all of this into a behavior, like navigating the window to a different page.

GIF images are just images, but they are animated. They are also limited to 256 colors and, aside from the limited colors, full quality/lossless, so they are usually quite large.

The advantage to GIFs is simple: If small enough, they are a convenient way to display something on your page that will work in all [image-enabled] browsers. Downsides: low quality, slow loading times/jumpy if too large, no customization beyond frame duration and simple looping (zero/number/infinite times through the entire loop, no customization beyond that).

Flash is very... well.. flashy. It's appealing and has potential, but it has some major downsides: requires flash installed and your site will have an annoying 'download plugin' warning. It's also a steep learning curve in some ways, and can be misused/overused a lot.

If you need flash, use flash. If you can get away with anything else (javascript, gif, whatever) that's better in 99% of the cases, I would say. If you must use flash, then it can be a good tool.

In some cases, it just is a bad idea to have such complex graphics on a site, though I'm not saying that applies to your plans.

[Bornfree]

thanks a lot guys.

[Twey]

Flash movies are programmable and interactive; you can set durations, looping, user-based events, time-based events and respond in a number of ways, as well as parse all of this into a behavior, like navigating the window to a different page.You missed the most obvious one: Flash is primarily vector-based.

[djr33]

Oh, not only that.

Flash is vector based and using code to store the animation, so it can result in a much smaller file, as well as being able to use bitmap images and other media, without storing it explicitly as pixels.

[sir_eg9]

how im going to convert swf file to gif?
thanks

[djr33]

I believe Flash has an export option.
If you are using a 3rd party application, you'll need to find one that allows this.
SWF isn't really an easy format to edit, so there's no easy answer.

[BLiZZaRD]

how im going to convert swf file to gif?
thanks

5th link down :) (http://www.effectmatrix.com/download.htm)