Working With Existing Animations; To Import An Animated Gif; To Open An Animated Gif - MACROMEDIA FIREWORKS 8-USING FIREWORKS Use Manual

Working with existing animations

You can use an existing animated GIF file as part of your Fireworks animation. There are two
ways of using the file: you can import the GIF into an existing Fireworks file, or you can open
the GIF as a new file.
When you import an animated GIF, Fireworks converts it to an animation symbol and places
it in the currently selected frame. If the animation has more frames than the current movie
does, you can choose to automatically add more frames.
Imported GIFs lose their original frame delay settings and assume the frame delay of the
current document. Because the imported file is an animation symbol, you can apply
additional motion to it. For example, you can import an animation of a man walking in place
and then apply direction and motion properties to have the man walk across the screen.
When you open an animated GIF in Fireworks, a new file is created and each frame in the
GIF is placed in a separate frame. Although the GIF is not an animation symbol, it does retain
all the frame delay settings from the original file.
After the file is imported, you need to set its file format to Animated GIF to export the
motion from Fireworks.

To import an animated GIF:

1.
Select File > Import.
2.
Locate the file and click Open.
3.
Click Yes to add additional frames to your animation.
If you click Cancel, only the first frame of the animated GIF is displayed. Although the whole
document is imported, you must add additional frames to view it.

To open an animated GIF:

Select File > Open and locate the GIF file.
322 Chapter 13: Creating Animation