GIF animation problem

[Graham Samuel]

At 12:30 +0000 6/11/03, I wrote:
>In an app that is in an advanced state of testing, I have a couple 
>of transparent buttons each of which has an icon which itself is an 
>animated GIF.

[...] I didn't say clearly that the user is allowed to drag these 
buttons around the screen.

>This generally works extremely well, but my beta tester has pointed 
>out that just one of these animations stops working as soon as its 
>border overlaps with the other one. It doesn't seem to mind 
>overlapping with other, static, controls (images and grcs).

I have tried all sorts of stuff now, such as changing the size of the 
GIFs, taking away other graphics and images, etc, but the phenomenon 
continues. It seems that the GIF with the most frames is the one 
which stops moving, while the one with less frames continues to 
animate: if both have the same number of frames, or are derived from 
the same image, then both stop. It doesn't seem to be an issue of the 
relative level (layer) of each GIF, and the problem shows up in 
different OSs.

I am now totally stuck - the only thing I can think of doing is to 
rearrange the entire screen so that the buttons don't have to 
overlap. It does begin to look like a bug in the engine's 
GIF-animating routine (I guess it must have one).

Still hoping for some help.

Graham

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          Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France