This is something I just wanted to share with everyone. It is a project born of the need to be able to preview the animations of simple, animated tiles, quickly and effectively. It ended up being bigger than I was expecting, as I tried to imagine myself in an artists shoes, and came up with several features that I was capable of implementing.
To put it succinctly, I am very much still a noob at programming. However, I thought someone out there might find this tool to be of use.
The program has the following features:
*Supports tile sizes from 8X8 to 512X512 in powers of 2
*Supports asynchronous sizes, aka rectangles
*Supports transparencies via alpha channel
*Group view allows for 3X3 tiles to be seen animated together
*Allows for changing of frame rate to examine animation speed
*Change the number of animation frames per loop
*Allows for multiple animations in a single file via rows
*Has a pause hotkey
*Has a reload hotkey, to allow semi-real time editing
*Automatically reads all .png files in the .exe's directory
*The directory listing can be reloaded
*Files in the directory can be flipped through
*The background color can changed from white to black through 17 shades of grey
*The window can be re-sized at will
The program has the following limitations:
*Only 32-bit PNG files are supported
*So far I have found that 24-bit PNG files work, but YMMV
*Files must be located in executable directory
I'm currently on a google site webpage until I can afford better hosting, located here: http://sites.google.com/site/tasteplasmatempsite/ .
A direct link to my about me page if anyone is curious: http://sites.google.com/site/tasteplasmatempsite/about
The program was made in Code::Blocks using SDL and compiling with minGW. I used Lazy Foo's excellent SDL tutorial site to learn about SDL, and many different online tutorials to learn what I know about C++. This project came together very quickly, the base of it done in a couple of days, and then most of the rest of it in a couple more, and then like 2 weeks to get the last thing working. (I work a FT job as well.) I am beginning to suspect that is a fairly standard curve in programming.
Thanks for checking this out, I hope it is useful. 
