Placing the Red Ball Gif

Oh, Lord. If making the red ball gif took six months off of my life, I hate to think what placing the red ball gif did to me. Cracking the "img" code was like deciphering the Rosetta Stone, or so I thought. (I hadn't got to tables, yet). "Img align left," "img align center," "img align middle" "text align left"... the answer had to be in there somewhere. Was it image placement and text alignment that forced me to finally give in and order one of those "dummy" books? I don't recall. I did learn that if I didn't want my red balls floating a good two or three inches away from my centered text line, I had to master the art of tables. Tables, just so I could place my little red balls. And mentally butting heads with left brainers who wanted Internet to go back to being just plain text. I sometimes wonder if they weren't right.