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animated GIFs, HTML emails
 
#1
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I often use HTML for emails -- especially when I want to create emphasis or highlight text, etc., and when I want to send jokes which contain animated GIFs.

The problem: I create the email as HTML with one or more animated GIFs inserted. I send the email and am astonished to find that TheBat has somehow and for some reason converted each GIF into a JPG!!! Of course, the impact is lost. Sometimes the GIF is sent in its original animated GIF form as intended, but more often it is converted to JPG. I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason for this so I can't know when to anticipate or how to avoid.

What gives??? Is this a bug, or a "feature." Anybody know why, or know a solution?
 
 
 
#2
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I cannot reproduce that behaviour over here and I must say that it is veryu unlikely that TB would be able to convert pictures to a different format.

I just tested it here and an animated gif simply stays an animated gif.

Would it be possible that you're using a firewall that's doing some content checking and converts stuffor that it's being done by something on your mail server? Years ago I was using a virus scanner on my mail server that offered this kind of options.
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I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
#3
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I received an email containing an animated GIF named "Part_01.gif" I right-clicked and saved the GIF to my hard drive. Next, I created an HTML email and inserted the saved GIF from my hard drive by clicking on the 'insert picture' icon.

I didn't notice this before, but TheBat changed the name of the attached GIF from "Part_01.gif" to "int_1.jpg" which looks to contain the first image from the animated GIF. I just did a search and there is no such file as "int_1.jpg" residing anywhere on my hard drive.

Actually, there are a total of 12 animated GIFs contained in the email. The first time I sent it I also sent a copy back to myself and was astonished to see the images were not animated. After more study, I found the GIFs were changed to JPGs. Only now did I notice the entire filename was changed. I've done this over and over, inserting one or more GIFs in various positions within test emails. Sometimes the GIFs remain unaltered, sometimes they are changed to JPG. I haven't discovered a pattern yet. It could be something very simple, but explanations escape me. Obviously, I could not be inserting a JPG file which doesn't even exist on my hard drive!

No, my firewall is doing no conversion. Actually, when I look in the 'sent' folder I find the sent file contains the renamed JPG attachments rather than the original GIF attachments. The email copies in the 'sent' folder match the ones being received, so TheBat is sending the attachments as JPG.

I will do some more experimentation and report back. If TheBat is incapable of converting a GIF to a JPG, how could this be happening?
 
 
 
#4
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As of today (4.2.10.1), TB! still reports animated GIFS as a single image JPG. Since I cannot add new 'smilies' to the default set, and have them display, how can I add an animated GIF to an E-mail? Adding it as a picture still calls it a JPG, when sent. I also cannot see the animation locally when entered into the E-mail body. Is there some 'trick' I'm missing?

******************

Hours later:
I have found a work-around for the problem, and I still don't understand the naming convention, but...

If I insert a GIF named '8_1_226.gif', it gets sent to the recipient as 'int_1.jpg'. If I insert a GIF named '11_2_113.gif', it gets sent properly, animated as expected. By renaming the orignal file (8_1_226.gif) to something else, it also worked. That means I need to test each gif, and rename those that don't get sent properly. This isn't any big deal, as long as I understand the problem, and can get around the quirky behavior.
Edited: George Deffner - 08 October 2009 23:44:15
 
 
 
#5
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I don't have any such problem and I use a LOT of animations in my emails.

Nothing should be getting renamed UNLESS you are copying and pasting into the email which works erratically at best. If you are inserting them (and NOT resizing them) they should go out animated.
 
 
 
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