Flash and swish are the best for big projects, little text animations and small pics can be done with any GIF maker (but remember its frame by frame animation)
I created a frame by frame animation once years and years ago, when it first came out. It was cool but I would not want to do that for a lot of images. Very time consuming. I am sure there are much easier ways to do it now like with the programs mentioned above.
Some people use swish, but that doesn't fit with me. I've tried selteco and easy gif animator. I think the best for flash banner is anim-fx, but that only for the flash text. For the image animation, I'm still searching..
If you find a good one goto the review section and write about it, would be nice to hear about a program which someone has used and who can tell the truth about it
With my experiece i prefer flash is the best software for creating the animation. lot of gif animators are there. but flash is easy and best forever...
You can use many different programs. I personally use animation shop, but its not that complicated. You can use photoshop or other animation programs which you can google.