@circular
I thought I had my initial problem re gif files resolved but not so. Today I was messing about with my tutorials and rand into an issue almost identical to that which made me re-open this thread.
I had BGRAControls and therefore BGRABitmap packages installed in the IDE. New project commenced and TImage added to the form (Additional component). Using the Picture property, a gif file was selected and loaded. Now the gif image is seen in design view but when the program runs, no image is displayed. If I uninstall BGRAControls, then the image is displayed.
Maybe I'll just give up on the BGRAControls and add the BGRABitmap package to a project if I need it as these tutorials use a mixture of bmp, gif and png files. Therefore this is going to be an ongoing issue for me.
I had experimented before wondering if the SpriteAnimation control could substitute for the TImage but I think that is just asking it to do something it was not really designed for.