Editing animated GIF's?

Hi,

I have no idea were to post this, so I thought I'd post it in the Technician's forum and hope for the best.

I'm trying to find a program which a "n00b" can use to edit an animated GIF file. I'm trying to reduce the "size" of the GIF to met the 100x100 standards required by these forums.. But I have no program which can edit animated gifs! I can view it fine, but thats all..

I really don't want something that will take a years worth of UNI study to know how to use.. I've tried looking at download.com for image editors as well as animation stuff.. and I freely admit I get confused at all the different option's and possibilites and stuff.. and in the end have no darned clue what I'd need to d/l to be able to do what I want to do.

So if anyone can help out by sugesting a program which is easy to use and learn that can be used to edit an animated GIF, please do! Muchly appreciate any help in advance

PS. I did try searching, but couldn't find anything...

Adobe ImageReady. Fairly straightforward program, reading the manual
(if there is one ) not necessary.

GIMP! No not you, this.

It's completely free and has a lot of options for animating gifs, as well as anything else you could wish for.

If you're using windows, follow this link:
http://www.gimp.org/windows/

The documentation tells you everything you need to know, so don't say you can't figure it out.

$$ is a concern there. I don't really thinks he needs all the features if only resizing and putting animated GIFs together.

Yeah, I should of mentioned that $$$ is a concern - which means Adobe ImageReady is out of the question.. it cost's money right? I appreciate the suggestion though

Cunning - I'll give that a whirl and see how I go, cheer's mate

oh noes! I can't figure it out! *head explodes* hehehe

Edit - I got it to work, thank you very much. GIMP is just what I was after, but in the end it's still no good ;/

I can't get the damned animation under the 19.5KB file size limit required on GWG without shrinking the animation so much that you can hardly even see it... *sighs* guess I need to tinker with the layers and try deleting a few and seeing if that will shrink the file size enought while not completely screwing the animation up...

Edit #2 - Well, I think i'm going to have to spend some time tinkering around with things. I dropped half the layers in the animation and it still was too big, and the animation was way too "fast" at that point.. so without some major tinkering around to try and see what I can do.. no Avatar for me.. *shrugs*

I really appreciate the suggestion for The GIMP as it's exactly what I was after. I'm going to take some time and read the doc's for it and play around with things..