GIF Optimization

Imagine you have to do a .GIF in Flash with a background image. Imagine that you have to use Flash cos there´s an animation of letters. Overmore and again: There is a background image.

Besides we are talking about a very important and international customer who doesn´t want to use CSS or Flash for it. This could have been really easy embedding a .SWF or just using the .GIF and another div down with the background image. But this is not the case, our customer wants a .GIF all together with a background image with less than 100 Kb and good quality.

So, this is what I did:
- I made the animation of letters in Flash and saved is as a .GIF with no background image. Parametres for the .GIF: Play it as a bucle, animation, color optimization, soft, Transparent, None, Web snap adaptative, 255
- I opened it in ImageReady and saved it as a .PSD
- I opened the .PSD in Photoshop, put the background image and saved a sequence of .JPGs for every frame
- I created a new .GIF with the animation so that the background image is in every step.
- I saved the new .GIF. with less than 100 Kb and good quality.

Conclussions:
- Flash is stupid for creating .GIF (still is!)
- Fireworks did not solve much
- I strongly think Adobe should have not removed ImageReady