Guidelines

• Treat GIFs as additional and optional aids to your textual content. Your documentation should be understandable without any graphical aids.
• Include GIFs only into online deliverables. If you plan to publish a given asset both as an online and printed deliverable, include a static image equivalent into printed deliverables.
  Tip: Assign the @audience="print" attribute to the static image and the @audience="online" attribute to the animated image. Use an appropriate DITAVAL when publishing your asset.
• Crop your GIFs so that they only show the relevant part of the interface that you capture.
• If you capture a web-application, use the zoom feature built-in your web-browser as much as possible.

Requirements

You can use the software of your choice to capture GIFs. However, ensure that your captures meet the following requirements.