How to use clipart and animated gifs:
By doing a google search, you will find that there are numerous free clipart sites available for your use. What you do not want to do is link directly to the URL listed on that site. This is forbidden on most sites as it is stealing bandwidth. You need to save the file to your hard drive and work with it from there. Here is some information that will help you with this.

How do I save an animated gif?
To keep a copy of one on your computer, move your mouse arrow on top of the image,
1. click right mouse button,
2. choose "Save Picture as..." [something similar in Netscape]
3. save image to your hard drive.
4. Now you can view the animation in any graphics program, where you can copy and paste them into your document or site as if pasting any other image or text.

How to post the image on your message forum profile?
To include a picture with your post, go to MY PROFILE at the top of the page and then click on Avatar. Go to the line that says Upload Avatar and browse through your computer to find the picture you want to use. Try to limit the size to 80 x 80. Click on Submit Modifications when done.

The concern lies with both file size and file dimensions.  The goal is to keep both as small as possible to keep the board running fast.  If you have questions on how to do either of these please let me know.  You can right click on any image and click properties to see the file size and dimensions if you are unsure what they are.  Kathy's image is a great example of the proper dimension and file size.  It shouldn't be any larger than that.

Thanks,

Mike

The Webmaster