Wow, I haven't thought about this in awhile. Smilies are made using what is called a "GIF" format. (GIF = Graphics Interchange Format) For extensive information on this see the Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format
An animated GIF is, as one might expect a series of static images displayed in order to create the illusion of motion. As one might expect this means that the file has not only the images necessary, but instructions on how to display them. A hiccup in the download process that results in the loss of even one of the lines of code could produce a static image.
There is one other possibility that is actually the more likely; Your computer was busy. Yep, every Operating System, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Unix or whatever has built into it a set of priorities that define what gets resources (memory, CPU time, etc.) when. It's quite possible that, without your knowledge your computer was doing something that it thought was more important than animating GIF's. If this is the case, had you waited long enough you would have eventually seen the tiny picture change. If you want to learn more about this search on " computer system resource priority " for starters.
Hope I've answered your question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format
An animated GIF is, as one might expect a series of static images displayed in order to create the illusion of motion. As one might expect this means that the file has not only the images necessary, but instructions on how to display them. A hiccup in the download process that results in the loss of even one of the lines of code could produce a static image.
There is one other possibility that is actually the more likely; Your computer was busy. Yep, every Operating System, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Unix or whatever has built into it a set of priorities that define what gets resources (memory, CPU time, etc.) when. It's quite possible that, without your knowledge your computer was doing something that it thought was more important than animating GIF's. If this is the case, had you waited long enough you would have eventually seen the tiny picture change. If you want to learn more about this search on " computer system resource priority " for starters.
Hope I've answered your question.
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