UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 7 Development How Do I? The trouble with .gif files

What IS the problem between my board and .gifs, anyway ? LOL

Ok, I have two problems on my board with .gifs

1. I cannot get any gifs with transparent backgrounds to work anywhere. I have tried to put a transparent gif in the header, and I have tried it in the header insert. I want my gif to be transparent so that it blends in with any background. So that when people choose different stylesheets, the gif won't be this picture with a white backround, sitting on a green, or blue, or grey, or whatever, table background.

I have put regular gifs, (black text on a white background), in there, and it works just fine. The ONLY difference in the two files is the background.

2. .gifs as attachments. I enabled the default, .gif, .jpg, and .txt files as attachments. All files upload just fine. And when you click on the file... the text file opens on screen and you can read it. The .jpg file opens on screen, and you can see the picture. But when you click on the attachment link and the uploaded file was a .gif file... all you get is a broken link icon. This has been the case for every gif file I have seen uploaded as an attachment.

The gif files are good gif files. I checked that out. Retrieved a couple from the server, and they are indeed, viable files. But my forum board simply will not open them.

For now, I have disabled .gif upload, and allow only .txt and .jpg

Anybody have any ideas ?

This is a new one... I have never had/heard of this problem before. Anyone else had a simular problem?

Is the problem just with your computer / browser or everyone.

Do you have a URL to show the problem.

Regards,

Ian

Good question, Ian.

I am going to enable .gifs once again, and see if anyone else complains of this.

The url...

http://www.quittintime.com

And thanks to both of you for your attention.

What you describe souds like a local problem. It seems your browser is having trouble with gif files.
Or maybe (I´m not too knowlegeble about this, though...) it could be the MIME type for gifs on the server is not set right. If it would be this you would have to contact your system administrator, though I really doubt it would be this.

Just in case... the gif files that dont display dont whitespace, weird characters, of
something like that?

I was able to view your gif header, didnt check to see if it is transparent. Couldnt find any gif attachments.

Anyway, I´m guessing its your browser. Maybe its time to reinstall.

Ok, I tried something a bit different.

My browser was on a proxy. I gave it direct access to the internet. The gif attachments seem to be working now.

However, the transparent gif is still being given a white background, instead of being treated as a transparent.

For testing purposes, I have made the background color of the stylesheet the light green color of some of the fields on the page. Now, when you go in, you can see the gif at the top showing as a white box, with black text, on a green background. It should simply be showing as the black text on the green background.

Sad to say I am the system administrator. I have a lot to learn. Starting with... MIME type ???? Is there a short, kindrgarten level, primer course on what the mime type of each different kind of file should be, where I can find the place to check the setting, and how to correct it if wrong ?

No white space, no wierd characters, etc. It showed as broken image links before. Now they show up, but the transparent ones do not act like transparencies.

To check a .gif attachment, go to the back porch, through the single forum inside, and to the first "test" post with my name on it. At the bottom of that post, I attached a .gif to a post. It does seem to work fine.

I appreciate your time and effort. Thank you very much.

Are you sure that the header image 'Quittin Time' is transparent?

The infopop image for example appears fine, and that is transparent.

Ian

That's right !! It does appear correctly. Hmmmm

The gif in the header is indeed a transparency.

But this leads me to the question of whether the file is somehow being changed as it is being uploaded to the server. I am uploading it in binary mode, not ascii.

I know ! I'll save it off the page, and see if it is still transparent when I open it on my computer. If not, then maybe it is being changed somehow in the upload process ?

Aha. That's the answer. It is no longer transparent. I wonder what could be causing it to lose it's transparency in the upload process ?


Thank youse guys very much. Now all I have to do is figure out why my transparencies are not staying transparent. LOL

Got the problem solved.

It was TOTALY local. The real problem was that my graphics program was not saving the files as transparencies. It said it was doing so. Everything worked as it always has. But the file that came out the end was not a transparency.


I just wanted to come back here and say thank you very much to youse guys for taking the time to help me out. I really do appreciate it.