Steve's take on GIF's
GIF’s are not likely to ever be supported on the album, as the software we use will not deal with GIF’s at all. There’s some interesting political reasons for this, but that basis of it all was that originally Compuserve came up with the GIF image format and spread it all over the place. Unisys, who own the compression algorithm patent, originally said that it was OK for GIF to use this algorithm without license fee. And then, when GIF became (extremely) popular, reversed that decision – presumably they didn’t realise that GIF used their algorithm until much later.
Here’s some more details;
Anyway, the upshot is, due to the 5 grand license requirement the software we use doesn’t support GIF and can no longer be made to.
The best bet is to use something like PaintShopPro, for which the license fee is paid, to convert your GIF’s into JPG’s and then upload those. Incidentally, the license is payable only if you’re creating a GIF (which by using it through the Album, AtomIC Systems are, every time its viewed) – not when you’re viewing it, so normal GIF’s shouldn’t be a problem, so long as whatever created it has a 5 grand license paid to Unisys (which as far as I remember, JASC have done with PaintShopPro)