Although I hesitate to publish this post, did you know that Power BI allows animated GIFs as backgrounds for report pages? I’m not advocating the use of animated GIFs in data visualization. Instead, I’m simply pointing out the possibilities in the tool.
There are small variations between the image formats and behavior when inserting an Image natively in Power BI versus using an image as a Background. For example, SVG is an available format for backgrounds but not natively supported as an Image (you can use SVG through other means such as adding it to certain visuals as a data URI, as a URL in HTML source in a custom visual such as Image by CloudScape, etc.).
In addition, for whatever reason, adding an animated GIF as an Image object only displays the first frame of the image. It’s static.
On the other hand, adding an animated GIF as a page Background displays the animation.
In this case, the GIF worked best using the Fill option, but your custom GIFs may require Normal, Fit, or Fill as appropriate. Use this tip wisely (or spare us and do not use it at all)!
Hi David, thanks for the post. I also found you can convert the GIF to base64 and visualise in a matrix table…works a treat if its a small GIF. 🙂