My advice to anyone is generally don't allow ActiveX controls to be installed from anywhere except for really big sites like Microsoft. It's just too difficult to judge how safe or unsafe control happens to be.

How is this different from Java? Well, Java has an entirely different security model which does not make assumption that user has been educated about specific Java applet. Java sets specific rules to what an applet can and cannot do, and generally these rules do an excellent job of preventing damage to a system (there have been bugs but no where near as many as with ActiveX).

On top of security concerns, ActiveX only works in Internet Explorer. Yes, I know there is a plug in for Netscape but it's slow and not very usable. Besides, most Netscape users don't have it installed. If you are designing a web site, please consider this very carefully. If you include ActiveX controls you are losing as many as 50 percent of your visitors. Perhaps more, depending upon your market. Is any functionality that you might gain worth that cost?

Of course, if you are creating an Intranet (a web local to a company) then by all means use all of ActiveX controls that you want. In this case, you have far more control over user environment that you have on web.

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You may indicate that a color in a GIF image is transparent, meaning whatever is below image will show through.

The GIF89a standard included animation, which basically allows multiple images to be included in a single GIF file. In that image you can specify timing that frames are shown and whether or not animation stops or loops forever.

Interlacing is a cool feature which allows graphics to be "faded in". Initially a very low quality image is displayed, and bits are slowly added as entire image is received. GIF supports this feature, which is useful for displaying very large images quickly.

An interesting albeit little known fact about GIF images is that they can include comments, which take up space and make graphic larger. There are a number of products which will remove these comments. I found that freeware program called GIFclean is simple to use and works well.