Displaying Downloaded Transparent Gif's

 

There are a few choices you can make when displaying downloaded transparent gif's to enhance their appearance,
unfortunately they don't leave you with a lot of good options.

1.) If you skipped the first three pages of this tutorial as I suspect, go back and read them now. Only by
understanding what you are dealing with, will you be able to make the correct decisions regarding your
graphic display.

2.) Display the gif's on a background reasonably close in basic color to the page color you downloaded them from.
Using my site as an example, the gif's on the pages with white color backgrounds were optimized for that
color and will therefore look best on white backgrounds. They will probably look good on many varying
shades of gray and off white or beige. Now that you understand what is going on, (see #1 if you don't) you can
experiment. If they are used on a black or dark background they will have the white jagged halo. Your optimum
choice is somewhere in between.
The downside of this choice is that it's your site, you have in mind what you want to do and what you want it to look like.
Changing your background just to use some downloaded graphics may not fit your plan at all.

3.) E-mail the site web master asking if he can reformat a copy of the graphic you want to match your background.
Again using my site as an example, if you want a gif from my site that is displayed on a black background and you want
to use it on your site against a white background, its going to look pretty bad unless reformatted for white. Most of us who make our own graphics retain a copy in it's native Graphic Editor format. It's fairly easy to simply save another transparent gif
copy using a transparent color optimized for your background.
The downside here is of course you may be completely ignored. Big deal, it doesn't hurt to ask. For myself, I don't
have a lot of traffic and can usually accommodate your request. Again the worst that can happen is I'll ignore you.