Since the ability to place a background pic in the Assembly room was implemented in version 1 or 2 but wasn't added to the Vertex modeller until version 4, it's my theory that 2 separate programmers did the coding. The first LIKED .gifs and added them in, the second programmer didn't like .gifs and left them out. Either that or it's some kind of deep, dark conspiracy to make eliminate .gifs altogether. Glad the info helped. mike