Animated Images

While animated images can attract the attention of the visitor, they make the page load slower because they use big files that slow down the loading and viewing of the rest of the page. The page might sit there for a considerable time, totally blank, while the first animated image loads.

Because they have much larger file sizes than regular images, animated images take up a lot more of the Internet's precious bandwidth --- yet another factor in slowing down the web.

They also can be distracting, making it harder for the visitor to concentrate on the other items on the page --- and they can become less interesting over time.

The animation runs at different speeds, depending on the visitor's hardware --- crawling on slower machines and flickering between images on fast machines.

That said, there are uses for simple and affordable forms of animation. But give the visitor a choice: "Click here to see --- in action."