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The key lesson here is not about a specific image format or company, but the fact that even a very light assertion or even hint of proprietary restrictions can
by jackpirate 7y ago
The key lesson here is not about a specific image format or company, but the fact that even a very light assertion or even hint of proprietary restrictions can kill or handicap a nascent technology or protocol in the bud.
Is it? Gifs have been wildly successful. Today, many web deverlopers prefer newer formats like png for both technical and philosophical reasons, but gifs continue to make up a huge fraction of internet pictures. The average 12 year old knows what a gif is.
- klez 7y ago> The average 12 year old knows what a gif is. Depends on what you mean by "know". If you mean "moving picture that is not a video", sure they do. But if you showed them an APNG they will probably call it a GIF as well.
- dredmorbius 7y agoGif owned lossless image formats before Unisys asserted their patent. In the aftermath, PNG was created, even animations shifted elsewhere -- mp4 and, though also proprietary, Flash. SVG popped up later, but fills some rolls previously held by gif. And simply using or supporting gifs became an issue -- it was political. That's not something you want to have happen to your standard.
- dredmorbius 7y agoAlso: because gifs are so predominantly used for animations and not static images, I've taken to using a client-side CSS style that renders all gifs as transparent, unless specifically hovered over. This very rarely affects anything other than animations. People simply aren't using gifs for images as a matter of course today. For photos, it's largely jpeg (vastly higher compression, though lossy), for text-based images, png, though SVG is making inroads, particularly for data visualisations.