Looking for animated GIF on Desktop program?

[InfinityYUL]

Hi, I'm looking for a program that will allow me to have a animated gif on my desktop, not background/wallpaper.

Back on older versions of windows there was a web content tab for the desktop that allowed for live websites, scripts and much more, including having a gif on the desktop in a scalable window. This video shows exactly that. Here is a image from the elder geek for more references and the main page.

I was informed by microsoft that these features are no longer available to the user in Windows 10 but that third party software exist that can do what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for this software that will allow me to place gifs on my desktop again, anyone know of any?

 

[gardenman]

Hi, I was watching your other thread and also looked for a program for you.

I did find one, but it's not perfect and is very limited. It will only display 1 image and you can only have 1 instance of the program running at a time.

It doesn't support GIF. It supports PNG files only. You might be able to use Irfanview to extract all of the frames from a GIF and convert them to PNG.

Placement is a bit weird too. You have to choose a section of screen, then you can "adjust" it from there.

On the positive side, it's free and it works (for 1 image).

http://customdesktoplogo.wikidot.com/

I'm sure there are other 3rd party solutions.

Edit:
Another possible option with a more complicated setup: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/animated-gif-desktop-wallpaper-rainmeter/

Edit 2:
After some experimentation, I was able to get it working in [Rainmeter] and I would now recommend it over the first one I suggested. You can have multiple GIFs on the desktop with Rainmeter. The setup is more complicated, and you still have to split the GIF frames up into indidual images. You also have to create an INI file. I might be able to help with those. Anyway, I took this image:

and added it to the desktop of my test system. Here are the results:

With the INI file you can control the size and speed.

 

[InfinityYUL]

Thank you for your time, and really do appreciate it, marked as solution.

I'm looking for a program that allows gifs on the desktop, this is a work around. I doubt I will be using this as microsoft has confirmed the ability to put web content on the desktop is still in windows 10, it was removed from the user not the OS. I was told there is third party software out there that allows this functionality to the user again, my goal is to find this software.

For others this could work well, for me this is something I will keep in mind if my search takes to long.

 

[gardenman]

You said "microsoft has confirmed the ability to put web content on the desktop is still in windows 10". An animated GIF isn't necessarily "web content". What the Microsoft person may have meant, is that there are programs that will allow you to put a full webpage on your desktop. There's also "gadget" types of programs.

As for an animated GIF, I really don't think it's possible using just the software included with Windows. It use to be with Active Desktop, but from what I have read, the options (and underlying code) were removed due to security reasons.

Read a few of these:

Quote: "was a security vulnerability. Therefore Active Desktop was not included in Vista."
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-desktop/add-animated-gif-to-desktop-picture/5bf6690f-0a8b-46b6-a0f9-0fb05faba2e9?auth=1

Quote: "The Active Desktop feature was dropped from Windows Vista"
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-set-a-webpage-as-desktop-background-in-windows-10/

Quote: "Active Desktop was first available in Windows 98, and was last issued with Windows XP."
https://kb.iu.edu/d/aodm

There's many more pages just like that.

I've also searched for a simple "Add a GIF to Windows 10 desktop" program and haven't found one. That's not saying that there isn't such a program, but I've been unable to find one.

I do hope you find what you are looking for, but from what I see right now, the only way would be using work around. Maybe someone else will reply with a better answer.

 

[InfinityYUL]

You are right, my conversation touched on many of the things you said and they were kind enough to point me at sources to review if I was interested, I am not, I just want a gif on my desktop.

In the context of my conversation with support about placing animated gif on the desktop there was no misunderstanding, they confirmed that there is no method available to the user that can do what I want, but that third party software exist that can place animated gifs on the desktop. I was talking about the web content tab and yes you can place live page feeds on your desktop and other options that they removed, but the point was animated gifs on the desktop, that is what they confirmed.(you know how long a wait is for a call back about gifs on your desktop...) I made it a point to be sure that it can be done, now I'm just trying to find what does it.

I appreciated your time and effort, had this post existed a week ago I could have saved much time.