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Gif needs to be EOLd - there is no need to use it as most browsers support modern alternatives like mp4 with real video codecs. Even safari tech preview can now

Gif needs to be EOLd - there is no need to use it as most browsers support modern alternatives like mp4 with real video codecs. Even safari tech preview can now play these inlined.

tomcooks 9y ago
B-but my millenial retro posers
dspillett 9y ago
> tech preview As it is not yet generally available as something the public will install, and given how long it can take for a wide userbase to upgrade, this support wouldn't mean being able to set gif's EoL to any date soon. Unless you refuse to let Safari hold you back as IE6 did for so long (and to an extent newer IE versions still do depending on you target audience - in my day job I have no choice but to support IE 8 and 11 to this day). Though if that is the case then you've stopped actively supporting Safari already.
- innagadadavida 9y ago
  Will be out in 6 months. Chrome already supports it.
emerged 9y ago
Do you suggest that the untold billions of both animated and static GIFs should be lossily transcoded to mp4 (which presumably also has a limited shelf life?) so that we can finally remove GIF support from web browsers because [reason here]? Btw, mp4 is a container format.
- yoz-y 9y ago
  There is also APNG, which might be better suited for this and supports transparency.
  - opencl 9y ago
    APNG is a strictly superior drop in replacement for GIF, has been around for ages, but never got adopted by anyone but firefox. I don't get it. Animated WebP also fills the same role but lacks support outside of Chrome. The trend of converting gifs to h264 videos is kind of awful in terms of image quality but I'm sure it saves a lot of bandwidth for sites like imgur and twitter.
    - yoz-y 9y ago
      APNG works in both Chrome and Safari, haven't tested in IE/Edge. h264 might have an advantage since it does consume less cpu due to hardware support though.
      - xd1936 9y ago
        aPNG was never accepted by the PNG standards body, and tends to be as large or larger than GIF[1]. If we're going to go through the effort of converting, then WebP makes way more sense. 1. https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/05/01/animated-png-format-compare-animated-webp-gif/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/05/01/animated-png-format...
        maxst 9y ago
        If you convert static GIF to static PNG, 99% of the time you'll get a smaller file. That was the original goal of PNG project, and it succeeded: static GIFs disappeared completely. Converting animated GIF to animated PNG leads to similar filesize savings.
        innagadadavida 9y ago
        Video formats like webp exploit temporal and spatial similarities to get efficiency. Gif/apng do not. This reduces bandwidth costs and file sizes very much.
        9y ago
- innagadadavida 9y ago
  Post is talking about lossy gif->gif conversion. MP4/H264 do the same but get you 10x gains, while maintaining much better quality. One tradeoff is the loss of transparency. Yes, I assumed everyone here knows about mp4/h264/etc. Nokia also released a more formal container spec using HEIF, that supports transparency (most folks will complain about patent encumbered issues). However it will be a while before browsers support it.
rakoo 9y ago
Browsers get the latest development, but you have to remember that the purpose of GIFs is to be shared, sometimes in applications that are not browsers. They still need to be viewable as intended on those platforms. Personally as soon as I find a mp4 instead of a gif I curse the uploader for not providing a reasonable gif backup I can use and share around.
jlebrech 9y ago
Browsers need to be EOLd in favour of sandbox binary app launchers but that's not gonna happen any time soon.
vardump 9y ago
mp4? That's not a video compression format. It's a stream container format. mp4 files might contain RealVideo (ugh) or MPEG1... or pretty much anything really. Perhaps you meant h.264 or MPEG-4 (which should not be confused with mp4 container format!). You can decode GIFs with a few hundred lines of code. Decoding different mp4 cases requires several orders of magnitude more code. One big advantage of GIFs is simplicity. So perhaps you could come up with something that could be decoded with at most one or two orders of magnitude more code?
antoineMoPa 9y ago
With all the gif art that gets created, I would be really sad about this.
spbaar 9y ago
Consider mobile. A huge number of phones, ones you might consider mid tier and not low end, can only play 1 or 2 videos at a time. Hence, the need for a video format that can be rendered in only software.
- Aelius 9y ago
  Except h.264 videos have hw accel behind them (faster + less power draw) and use less data, making them doubly preferable on mobile as well.

Gif needs to be EOLd - there is no need to use it as most browsers support modern alternatives like mp4 with real video codecs. Even safari tech preview can now play these inlined.

tomcooks 9y ago

B-but my millenial retro posers

dspillett 9y ago

> tech preview As it is not yet generally available as something the public will install, and given how long it can take for a wide userbase to upgrade, this support wouldn't mean being able to set gif's EoL to any date soon. Unless you refuse to let Safari hold you back as IE6 did for so long (and to an extent newer IE versions still do depending on you target audience - in my day job I have no choice but to support IE 8 and 11 to this day). Though if that is the case then you've stopped actively supporting Safari already.

innagadadavida 9y ago
Will be out in 6 months. Chrome already supports it.

emerged 9y ago

Do you suggest that the untold billions of both animated and static GIFs should be lossily transcoded to mp4 (which presumably also has a limited shelf life?) so that we can finally remove GIF support from web browsers because [reason here]? Btw, mp4 is a container format.

yoz-y 9y ago
There is also APNG, which might be better suited for this and supports transparency.
- opencl 9y ago
  APNG is a strictly superior drop in replacement for GIF, has been around for ages, but never got adopted by anyone but firefox. I don't get it. Animated WebP also fills the same role but lacks support outside of Chrome. The trend of converting gifs to h264 videos is kind of awful in terms of image quality but I'm sure it saves a lot of bandwidth for sites like imgur and twitter.
  - yoz-y 9y ago
    APNG works in both Chrome and Safari, haven't tested in IE/Edge. h264 might have an advantage since it does consume less cpu due to hardware support though.
    - xd1936 9y ago
      aPNG was never accepted by the PNG standards body, and tends to be as large or larger than GIF[1]. If we're going to go through the effort of converting, then WebP makes way more sense. 1. https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/05/01/animated-png-format-compare-animated-webp-gif/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/05/01/animated-png-format...
      - maxst 9y ago
        If you convert static GIF to static PNG, 99% of the time you'll get a smaller file. That was the original goal of PNG project, and it succeeded: static GIFs disappeared completely. Converting animated GIF to animated PNG leads to similar filesize savings.
        innagadadavida 9y ago
        Video formats like webp exploit temporal and spatial similarities to get efficiency. Gif/apng do not. This reduces bandwidth costs and file sizes very much.
        9y ago
innagadadavida 9y ago
Post is talking about lossy gif->gif conversion. MP4/H264 do the same but get you 10x gains, while maintaining much better quality. One tradeoff is the loss of transparency. Yes, I assumed everyone here knows about mp4/h264/etc. Nokia also released a more formal container spec using HEIF, that supports transparency (most folks will complain about patent encumbered issues). However it will be a while before browsers support it.

rakoo 9y ago

Browsers get the latest development, but you have to remember that the purpose of GIFs is to be shared, sometimes in applications that are not browsers. They still need to be viewable as intended on those platforms. Personally as soon as I find a mp4 instead of a gif I curse the uploader for not providing a reasonable gif backup I can use and share around.

jlebrech 9y ago

Browsers need to be EOLd in favour of sandbox binary app launchers but that's not gonna happen any time soon.

vardump 9y ago

mp4? That's not a video compression format. It's a stream container format. mp4 files might contain RealVideo (ugh) or MPEG1... or pretty much anything really. Perhaps you meant h.264 or MPEG-4 (which should not be confused with mp4 container format!). You can decode GIFs with a few hundred lines of code. Decoding different mp4 cases requires several orders of magnitude more code. One big advantage of GIFs is simplicity. So perhaps you could come up with something that could be decoded with at most one or two orders of magnitude more code?

antoineMoPa 9y ago

With all the gif art that gets created, I would be really sad about this.

spbaar 9y ago

Consider mobile. A huge number of phones, ones you might consider mid tier and not low end, can only play 1 or 2 videos at a time. Hence, the need for a video format that can be rendered in only software.

Aelius 9y ago
Except h.264 videos have hw accel behind them (faster + less power draw) and use less data, making them doubly preferable on mobile as well.