Animated GIF

What's a good software to create animated GIFs? I'm thinking like banners for advertising and such. I'm buying Adobe Creative Suite 1.3 that has Photoshop CS and lots of other goodies, but I'm not sure if it's good for animated GIFs.

Thanks.

Flash.

Is that the only option?

No, you can also use Photoshop CS to create animation. Haven't used flash for animation but my avatar is a Photoshop Image Ready animation of 6 frames and two backgrounds.
Something simple, but effective, do you like it?

I find Jasc Animation Shop useful.

yep - same here.

I have Paint Shop Pro which come along with Jasc Animation Shop. very basic and simple, but enough for my needs.

for more professional animations, Flash is the answer though.

Thanks guys.

I agree with flash, the way it is setup is designed for animation and as long as you change the export settings to animated gif, it will easly export it as such, plus it will give you experience when you decide to creat more advanced stuff later. You can download a 30 free trial from www.macromedia.com, follow the tutorials they are very good and will get you started.

But Fireworks can be changed to have the same timeline that flash has to create the same effects and all the others will happily do the job it all depends on which you are familiar with and most comfortable

Hope that helps sorry if it doesn't