How to use Animated Gif in a delphi form

Question

I think theres no native support to gif animated images.

How is the best way? any free component that allow that? I was thinking in using a TImage and a ImageList + Timer, but I need to export each frame of the gif to a separated bmp file.

Answer 1

It's pretty simple in modern Delphi. It's all built in. Drop a TImage onto the form and load the animated GIF into the Picture property. Then, start the animation by means of the Animate property:

(Image1.Picture.Graphic as TGIFImage).Animate := True;

You can control the animation with AnimateLoop and AnimateSpeed. It should be pretty easy to guess how to switch the animation off again!

Now, since you are using Delphi 7, you don't have the TGIFImage component built-in. However, you can download the code from Finn Tolderlund's website (you want the latest version of TGIFImage). With this version of the component, the code above should work fine, although I personally have not used it since I ported from D6 to D2010 a few years back.

All these various TGIFImage codes are really just versions of the same component, originally written by Anders Melander and, in 2007, donated to Embarcadero for inclusion in Delphi.