Open Source Options for Graphic Design?

[Dave M G]

Ubuntu Users,

	I'm a Windows refugee, finding my home with Ubuntu Linux. So far,
everything is running smoothly. I've switched over to open source
options for all my tasks that I used to do with Windows.

	I do some web design, mainly for friends and groups that I associate
with. I've been slowly switching all my web site development from things
like GoLive and PhotoShop to Quanta and Gimp. And, on the results end,
making my web sites completely W3C compliant and CSS driven for layouts.

	So far so good. However, with one of the web sites I work on, some of
the people who rely on me to design it for them are really keen to have
a Flash component for part of it.

	Now, to be completely accurate, they don't really care *how* the web
site is made, whether it's Flash or whatever else I use. It's just that
a previous web designer used Flash for this one element, and so that's
the model they are starting from.

	What they want is relatively simple. On the top page, they want to
rotate through a few images. Right now, the Flash object that handles
this task just cycles through the images like a slide show, flashing
white in between each image.

	I'd like to be able to accommodate them with at least some animated
design element that meets their desires, but I want to be able to do it
with an open source solution.

	So I looked on the web and saw that there are open source methods of
creating Flash objects, but that they are extremely complicated (to my
newbie eyes) to install. I looked into animated PNGs, and found that
there's all sorts of controversy between aPNG file formats and MNGs...
and that's even before one considers issues of browser support.

	This being a pro-open source group, can anyone help me come to grips
with what my options are with open source choices for delivering
animated content? I'm a little overwhelmed by the information I'm
getting on the web.

	And, while I'm at it, are there any good mailing lists that are dedicated to open source graphic designers that anyone knows about or can recommend? I just did a Google search and didn't see any.

	Any advice would be much appreciated.

--
Dave M G