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i meant (but got distracted and subsequently didn't) to write a note on when NOT to use gifs. i don't think they're a killer to screencasts or anything.

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I was kind of hoping you'd solve those problems so I could just use gifs. :)

It occurred to me once that some kind of JS animation might do, as well. But you'd need a "player" that would allow rewind. It would be too much work to build that for any particular blog post but quite handy to apply if someone else built it.

Does the structure of animated gifs allow for any control over how the thing is played back?

No, you should make the gifs so they're short enough steps they just repeat and aren't confusing. Make sense? I'm going to write another post on this in more detail I think.

So basically each gif covers one discrete step of whatever process you're documenting? That would work. I don't want a dozen animations all going at it at once on a page, though.

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