Back before HTML 5, Flash, or fancy scripting, the only way you could
be sure that you would annoy your readers was to use animated GIFs.
Not wanting to disappoint, Microsoft made their own GIF creation
program: GIF Construction Set. In the late 90's sprit of crushing
competition, Microsoft gave it away for free. It was also bundled
with Microsoft Image Composer and Microsoft FrontPage.
Construction Set. Although in practice GIF Construction set worked
better for building the animated GIFs, and then GIF Animator was
useful for touching things up afterwards. (Mainly removing the
shareware GIF Construction Set's "created by" comment text. :P )