3 ms·
The interesting thing is the formats specified in Andreesen's request: Xbm and Xpm. This was a time before JPEG and GIF (and certainly before PNG). I have some
by amyjess 11y ago
The interesting thing is the formats specified in Andreesen's request: Xbm and Xpm. This was a time before JPEG and GIF (and certainly before PNG).
I have some vague memories of the old days, when compressed images were a novelty, and people were talking about how you had to have special software to view GIF, which was described as this special ultra-high-tech format.
I think the main program people recommended was called GIFConverter, which itself is a telling name because it shows just how much of a new concept compression was that you somehow had to "convert" the image in order to display it. (edit: just checked, and not only is GIFConverter still maintained, but it's now available for iOS as well... didn't expect that)
- frik 11y agoNope, read on, GIF was supported from day one: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0257.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0257.ht... "Back to the inlined image thread again -- I'm getting close to releasing Mosaic v0.10, which will support inlined GIF and XBM images/bitmaps, as mentioned previously." -- Marc Andreessen (Fri, 12 Mar 93) XBM file support had been removed in Internet Explorer 6 (IE 1-6 is based on Mosaic code, see IE6 about dialog): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBM
- amyjess 11y agoOh, I'm not disputing that. I just thought it was an interesting bit of history that the original message (which OP linked to) mentioned two dead formats and none of the formats that are integral to the modern web.