OK, John...
did you read
this post at all? (I'm sure you did, it was probably the second longest thread- OK, maybe not). I used a program named "unFREEz" to animated a series of gif files. It's an extremely small program. I can e-mail it to you if you'd like. I downloaded it from cNet (I think). Just do search for "animated gifs" and "freeware". Some people tend not to like the animated gifs for slow download reasons, but the text of a thread will show up before the pictures, so they can read while it downloads. If they finish reading before it downloads, they can just hit the "back" button. Also, I did not upload my animated gif to TBN. I just linked to it. I am hosting it myself, so it shouldn't take space on the TBN server(s).
Everyone, please elaborate if I am totally wrong /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.
BTW, John, I sure do like your name /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif.