This is a quick summary and explains how the Nima-WS bookmarklet and this animaker page work together using local web browser storage to let you make animations of images you find around the web.

You can read more about local storage here on Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

• You visit a web site (whose images you're allowed to use)
• You click the bookmarklet to activate it for that page
• You <alt> and right-click an image you want to use in your animation
• The Nima-WS dialog box opens up
• You click the button to add it to that web-site's image store

If you move to a new page on the same website to continue getting images, you repeat the above, starting at clicking the bookmarklet to activate it on the new page.

When you're done with that web site and you've decided on the template to use, you click the button to open this animaker page with either a new Master Image Store or to add your images to the existing one you created using the bookmarklet on an earlier web site.

When you've added all the images you want for your animation to the master image store you can tweak things for your animation with the stop and set options button:

• Drag and drop the images into the order you want
• Delete any images you decide you don't want in your animation after all
• Set the images you want permanently displayed according to the template you chose
• Set the 'call to action' text you want to use and choose its placement
• Set the font to use for the text
• Generate the animation using your new settings

Yes - sort of. The first ones will be on show all the time and the rest will cycle round

Nifty will make an image store for every web site you use the Nifty Nima-WS bookmarklet on. On top of that the Nifty web site has its own - called the Master Image Store.

The bookmarklet dialog box gives you two buttons for opening this animaker page:

• open animaker (add to master)
  the images in the website's image store will be added the Nifty Master Image Store
• open animaker (new master)
  the website's image store will become the new Nifty Master Image Store - any existing images there will first be removed

You'll notice that the add to master option lets you mix and match images from different web sites in the same animation. How creative will you be?

These PODs and web sites work fine as do pretty much any sites where the images are placed using standard HTML: (links open in a new tab)

• Zazzle
• Redbubble
• Spoonflower
• FineartAmerica
• Unsplash
• Freepik
  (click the image first, then use <alt> right-click, then close the clicked image, then click the button to add to image store)
• Mockey
• Deep AI Image Generator
• Deep Dream Generator
• There's lots of other PODs / Artist curation sites that work too - lumas, greatbigcanvas, etsy and many more.

The following don't work:

• Society6
  their security set-up prevents the Nifty server from being able to download images
• Spreadshirt
  again, their security set-up prevents it working with the Nifty server
• Teepublic
  images are embedded so deeply in their page code that Nima-WS can't get at them
• Threadless
  their image urls are so non-standard Nima-WS can't use them

A reminder: the master image store is held in your browser's local storage for the Nifty web site.

Context, you're on a web site and you've been using the bookmarklet to add images to its image store:

• When you use the open animaker (add to master) button, the images in the image store for that web site get added to any that are currently in the master image store.
  Good for when you want to mix up images from different web sites in your animation.
• When you use the open animaker (new master) button, the master image store is cleared first. Only then are the images placed in it.

No because if it's empty, it'll create the Master Image Store as the first step

No

An optimum delay is set of 2 seconds between images. This is a balance between it being slow enough to give a viewer the chance to see the image but not so slow that they get bored and move on without clicking!

Yes

Hit the stop and set options button. In the options panel that opens up you'll be able to drag and drop the images into the order you want.

In addition you can set the ones that always stay on show and remove any you don't want included.

Yes

When you hit the bookmarklet one of the controls on the dialog box that opens is a dropdown list of the different template options you can use.

Choose one and when you open this animaker page then that's the one you'll get. Just make sure you have enough images in the master image store for the one you choose.

Yes, as long as they're publicly available on the web somewhere (and don't use yucky and convoluted html to display them!) Here's one place I've tried that you can use:

• imgbb (opens in a new tab)

The page you're on when you open this animaker page is the one given in the link.

If that page includes a title and / or a description then they'll be put into the text box with the link.

Of course, if you're mixiing images from different web sites, you'll want to think about what makes most sense as a link.

If you pay a Nifty subscription then yes, it's used in the link you're given in the text box (applies both to normal and promoter program subscriptions).

If you don't pay a subscription, then at the toss of a computer coin, either yours gets used or mine does. On average, yours will be used in half the animations you create.

This is known as a 50/50 referral split and helps to pay for the Nifty web server.

Yes. Just edit the link that you're given in the text box so it doesn't have the ? or anything after it.

Yes, but not quite in the same way as for Facebook or X/Twitter. Unfortunately, without taking an additional conversion step it won't animate.

So what you need to do is to convert the animated gif file to an mp4 video and that will animate on Pinterest. I use and recommend convertio (opens in a new tab)

So to do this, first set up any options how you want then:

• right-click and save the animation to your desktop
• start creating your new pin
• convert the animation to mp4 at the link above and download the resulting mp4 to your desktop
• drag that mp4 video to the pin
• edit the text you're given in the box on the animation creation page to how you want it
• add any hashtags you want - use no more than, say, five
• copy the text for the title and paste it into your pin
• copy the text for the description and paste it
• copy and paste the link text
• hit publish
• choose your board

You're done! You'll find your pin in the Created section and you should expect lots of impressions and engagements

There will be! (TBD) tutorial (opens in a new tab)

Click the button labelled stop and set options. The options panel will open and generation of the current animation will stop.

When you've set things the way you want, click the generate button to start over, generating the animation with your chosen options.

Note that once you've clicked the stop and set options button there's no way to continue. The only choice you have at this point is to hit the generate button or to close the tab.

If you don't set any options then no text will be used, the first image from the store will be the one permanently on show and the rest will cycle around.

Here's some tips in using the animated gifs / mp4s. More may be added in future.

• If making for Pinterest, put any text at the top because the white progress bar that shows while the video is playing partially obscures the text if it's at the bottom
• Niftyers report that, once converted to mp4, these are great for Instagram as well!
• If there are more than 12 images in the master image store, your animated gif will likely end up being larger than 15MB - which is the largest allowed on Twitter/X. If that happens, just convert it to an mp4 video and then it'll be ok. For conversion, I use and recommend convertio (opens in a new tab)
• You can speed up picking your images with the bookmarklet by using alt (Mac = option) and left click on the add to image store button. Doing that will also close the dialog box so you can get on with picking the images. Yaay - one less button click!