7 ms·

Burn All GIFs (2000)

42 points by pizza 4y ago

naet 4y ago
I was curious what the current status of the patent was and it's expired. "The United States LZW patent expired on June 20th, 2003.. According to Unisys, the counterpart Canadian patent expires July 7, 2004, the counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expire June 18, 2004, and the Japanese counterpart patents expire June 20, 2004." https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/Gif/Gif.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/Gif/Gi...
Jaruzel 4y ago
> LZW is used in an obsolete graphic format called GIF Tell that to all the kids that 22 years later after this article, still use GIFs several times a day in their ubiquitous chatting apps. :) https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.gif https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.gif
- sp332 4y ago
  Most chat apps convert GIFs to video formats like WEBM to save money. https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm It also supports higher frame rates and more colors. Edit: A better comparison is https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAPo/the-universe-tim-and-eric-mind-blown.mp4 https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAPo/the-universe-tim-and-er... vs https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAAd/the-universe-tim-and-eric-mind-blown.gif https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAAd/the-universe-tim-and-er...
  - egfx 4y ago
    but not drag and drop most notably
  - naet 4y ago
    I work with GIFs sometimes still on production sites. I know Webm and other formats might be heavily recommended, but there are a ton of issues currently in the browser ecosystem with videos and autoplay rules (looking at iOS specifically as a major problem causer here...). Those issues can make webm/etc more trouble than they are worth unless you're operating at a really large scale, or you're willing to lose your animations for a decent percentage of users.
    - robertoandred 4y ago
      There's no autoplay issues on iOS, just make sure it's muted. It's the same rules as on Android.
      - naet 4y ago
        If an ios device is in low power mode it won't autoplay a muted video but it will display a gif.
    - chrismorgan 4y ago
      That videos might not autoplay is a feature. That I can’t stop GIFs from autoplaying without disabling playing at all is a bug. (One that I don’t expect to ever be fixed, or even widely acknowledged as a bug, but a bug nonetheless.)
      - nine_k 4y ago
        While I agree with you, the problem here as a lack of consistency between browsers, which leads to using the least common denominator from 1990s. Ideally all browsers should have uniform means to control animated graphics (allow or not autoplay, stop all or stop a particular one, etc), and a uniform way to show the intent (autoplay or not, play on hover, etc).
  - ki_ 4y ago
    for some reason, chrome network tab says they are both 6.4MB. or is that normal?
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    It's lame but common for an app to support GIF but not WEBM as input while converting all GIF to WEBM behind the scenes.
  - banana_giraffe 4y ago
    Or it's just a GIF: $ wget "https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm" --2022-08-12 09:39:06-- https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm Resolving c.tenor.com (c.tenor.com)... 142.251.46.225 Connecting to c.tenor.com (c.tenor.com)|142.251.46.225|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 6381102 (6.1M) [image/gif]
    - fragmede 4y ago
      The first url just returns GIF regardless of the extension given. https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.asdf https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.asdf is also a gif. The mp4 of it is at https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAPo/mind-blow-galaxy.mp4 https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAPo/mind-blow-galaxy.mp4, and is 12.1 MiB to the HD gif's 17 MiB (https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAAC/mind-blow-galaxy.gif https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAAC/mind-blow-galaxy.gif). As you noted, the SD gif is only 6.1 MiB.
  - robertoandred 4y ago
    There's nothing special about webm, it's just a video format. GIFs are also converted to MP4s.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Even now it’s still the most guaranteed to work on all systems and platforms, even if very space inefficient.
  - RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
    And if you optimize with something like gifsicle, you might be surprised at how small GIFs can wind up being: https://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/ https://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/
- kzrdude 4y ago
  The word GIF has actually expanded its meaning. It now (in chatting apps) just means animated picture even though it's not using that file format.
JoyrexJ9 4y ago
I remember the hullabaloo around this patent and using GIFs at the time. But nothing ever came of it, did it? People just ignored the patent and carried on as normal as far as I can tell.
- jandrese 4y ago
  The patents expired shortly afterward. I figure some lawyers made some money at big companies in the 2-3 year window where they could.
- mewse-hn 4y ago
  GIF used to be a general purpose image format even for static images. Without the awareness campaign, enterprising devs would probably have extended the gif format to more than 8bpp and we wouldn't use PNG for that today. I'd call that a considerable result.
- hedgehog 4y ago
  I don't think there was a lot of immediate action because GIF was already entrenched but I'm guessing a lot of people learned from the situation. It sure made an impression on me.
dosman33 4y ago
(Pulls spectacles down to tip of nose) Ha, I remember this site. Back in my day we had to make our animated gif's by hand. I remember having a lot of fun photoshopping each frame and using some shareware to stitch it all together into an animation. However, after all that work I was not going to ditch my hand crafted animated gifs. Thankfully Unisys probably realized there was not much money in going after millions of freely created Geocities sites. About the equivalent of the fed trying to chase down every autist posting on 4chan today.
- iratewizard 4y ago
  They missed out on all that AIM avatar money. We could have had "Blingee powered by Unisys"
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Bored Patent Troll Yacht Club?
RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
With the patents long expired and GIF universally supported by software new and old, avoiding the format today is absurd. GIFs will work many places WEBM doesn't, and support for animated PNGs is dismal. For pixel art or other source material that naturally has a low color depth, GIF can even outperform WEBM in compression.
- chrismorgan 4y ago
  With a significantly better alternative universally supported by all browsers for years, using GIFs on the web today is absurd. If you do actually want a lossless, auto-playing thing, the last browser to support animated PNGs (Edge) added it 2½ years ago (in the EdgeHTML → Chromium transition; I disqualify IE from being called a browser, BTW), and the fallback behaviour of showing the first frame is… well, commonly preferable, frankly. Animated images are mostly a terrible idea. (I have absolutely no idea how good APNG support is outside browsers, relative to animated GIF support.) But you should almost always use a proper video codec anyway, which are generally vastly more bandwidth- and power-efficient. (I freely admit the situation is messed up with video formats, with the only pretty-much-universally-supported codec, H.264, still being patent-encumbered. WebM is almost there now, with Safari for macOS having had it for just over a year on Safari 14.1+ and macOS 11.3+, but there’s still macOS 10.15 for a little longer and maybe Safari on iOS not supporting it (unclear), so you can’t quite go WebM. I will note incidentally that animated WebP is a thing too, and has slightly better support, back to Safari 14/macOS 11 with Safari 14 for iOS working too.)
  - catach 4y ago
    > Animated images are mostly a terrible idea. Consider that insisting that a usecase is bad, and you should feel bad works against establishing credibility when offering alternative solutions for that usecase.
    - chownie 4y ago
      It's unkind and a little absurd to tone police by writing a strawman comment that's ruder than the actual one you're replying to.
habibur 4y ago
Interesting fact. Burn GIF called for using JPEG as alternative. And then some years later JPEG patent/payment issues came up. Leading to a short lived Burn JPEG movement too. Next alternate shown was PNG at that time.
- lazyjeff 4y ago
  Are you sure you recall correctly? The linked page recommends upgrading GIF to PNG, "the only reasonable alternative to paying the Unisys tax on the web is to upgrade graphics from GIF to PNG format", which makes sense because it's a lossless conversion. PNG was a new format back that, without much adoption. JPEG doesn't make sense as a substitute format for GIF, and would greatly increase the size and decrease the quality of files.
  - habibur 4y ago
    PNG support was broken and partial on browsers at that time. People were waiting for PNG but it wasn't ready yet. Plus this wasn't the only page on burn GIF. This call was on thousands of sites. A viral movement from that time.
sombragris 4y ago
Ah, a trip down memory lane. I remember seeing that website and after that, I started using only PNG for losless compressed images. Still do to this day; I don't recall saving anything as a GIF.

42 points by pizza 4y ago

naet 4y ago

I was curious what the current status of the patent was and it's expired. "The United States LZW patent expired on June 20th, 2003.. According to Unisys, the counterpart Canadian patent expires July 7, 2004, the counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expire June 18, 2004, and the Japanese counterpart patents expire June 20, 2004." https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/Gif/Gif.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Patents/Gif/Gi...

Jaruzel 4y ago

> LZW is used in an obsolete graphic format called GIF Tell that to all the kids that 22 years later after this article, still use GIFs several times a day in their ubiquitous chatting apps. :) https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.gif https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.gif

sp332 4y ago
Most chat apps convert GIFs to video formats like WEBM to save money. https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm It also supports higher frame rates and more colors. Edit: A better comparison is https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAPo/the-universe-tim-and-eric-mind-blown.mp4 https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAPo/the-universe-tim-and-er... vs https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAAd/the-universe-tim-and-eric-mind-blown.gif https://c.tenor.com/3eIvVsG3yPYAAAAd/the-universe-tim-and-er...
- egfx 4y ago
  but not drag and drop most notably
- naet 4y ago
  I work with GIFs sometimes still on production sites. I know Webm and other formats might be heavily recommended, but there are a ton of issues currently in the browser ecosystem with videos and autoplay rules (looking at iOS specifically as a major problem causer here...). Those issues can make webm/etc more trouble than they are worth unless you're operating at a really large scale, or you're willing to lose your animations for a decent percentage of users.
  - robertoandred 4y ago
    There's no autoplay issues on iOS, just make sure it's muted. It's the same rules as on Android.
    - naet 4y ago
      If an ios device is in low power mode it won't autoplay a muted video but it will display a gif.
  - chrismorgan 4y ago
    That videos might not autoplay is a feature. That I can’t stop GIFs from autoplaying without disabling playing at all is a bug. (One that I don’t expect to ever be fixed, or even widely acknowledged as a bug, but a bug nonetheless.)
    - nine_k 4y ago
      While I agree with you, the problem here as a lack of consistency between browsers, which leads to using the least common denominator from 1990s. Ideally all browsers should have uniform means to control animated graphics (allow or not autoplay, stop all or stop a particular one, etc), and a uniform way to show the intent (autoplay or not, play on hover, etc).
- ki_ 4y ago
  for some reason, chrome network tab says they are both 6.4MB. or is that normal?
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  It's lame but common for an app to support GIF but not WEBM as input while converting all GIF to WEBM behind the scenes.
- banana_giraffe 4y ago
  Or it's just a GIF: $ wget "https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm" --2022-08-12 09:39:06-- https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.webm Resolving c.tenor.com (c.tenor.com)... 142.251.46.225 Connecting to c.tenor.com (c.tenor.com)|142.251.46.225|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 6381102 (6.1M) [image/gif]
  - fragmede 4y ago
    The first url just returns GIF regardless of the extension given. https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.asdf https://c.tenor.com/bD9vHNiR1rQAAAAd/boom-mind-blown.asdf is also a gif. The mp4 of it is at https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAPo/mind-blow-galaxy.mp4 https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAPo/mind-blow-galaxy.mp4, and is 12.1 MiB to the HD gif's 17 MiB (https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAAC/mind-blow-galaxy.gif https://c.tenor.com/Oc4nf8N08jIAAAAC/mind-blow-galaxy.gif). As you noted, the SD gif is only 6.1 MiB.
- robertoandred 4y ago
  There's nothing special about webm, it's just a video format. GIFs are also converted to MP4s.
bombcar 4y ago
Even now it’s still the most guaranteed to work on all systems and platforms, even if very space inefficient.
- RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
  And if you optimize with something like gifsicle, you might be surprised at how small GIFs can wind up being: https://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/ https://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/
kzrdude 4y ago
The word GIF has actually expanded its meaning. It now (in chatting apps) just means animated picture even though it's not using that file format.

JoyrexJ9 4y ago

I remember the hullabaloo around this patent and using GIFs at the time. But nothing ever came of it, did it? People just ignored the patent and carried on as normal as far as I can tell.

jandrese 4y ago
The patents expired shortly afterward. I figure some lawyers made some money at big companies in the 2-3 year window where they could.
mewse-hn 4y ago
GIF used to be a general purpose image format even for static images. Without the awareness campaign, enterprising devs would probably have extended the gif format to more than 8bpp and we wouldn't use PNG for that today. I'd call that a considerable result.
hedgehog 4y ago
I don't think there was a lot of immediate action because GIF was already entrenched but I'm guessing a lot of people learned from the situation. It sure made an impression on me.

dosman33 4y ago

(Pulls spectacles down to tip of nose) Ha, I remember this site. Back in my day we had to make our animated gif's by hand. I remember having a lot of fun photoshopping each frame and using some shareware to stitch it all together into an animation. However, after all that work I was not going to ditch my hand crafted animated gifs. Thankfully Unisys probably realized there was not much money in going after millions of freely created Geocities sites. About the equivalent of the fed trying to chase down every autist posting on 4chan today.

iratewizard 4y ago
They missed out on all that AIM avatar money. We could have had "Blingee powered by Unisys"
- djbusby 4y ago
  Bored Patent Troll Yacht Club?

RodgerTheGreat 4y ago

With the patents long expired and GIF universally supported by software new and old, avoiding the format today is absurd. GIFs will work many places WEBM doesn't, and support for animated PNGs is dismal. For pixel art or other source material that naturally has a low color depth, GIF can even outperform WEBM in compression.

chrismorgan 4y ago
With a significantly better alternative universally supported by all browsers for years, using GIFs on the web today is absurd. If you do actually want a lossless, auto-playing thing, the last browser to support animated PNGs (Edge) added it 2½ years ago (in the EdgeHTML → Chromium transition; I disqualify IE from being called a browser, BTW), and the fallback behaviour of showing the first frame is… well, commonly preferable, frankly. Animated images are mostly a terrible idea. (I have absolutely no idea how good APNG support is outside browsers, relative to animated GIF support.) But you should almost always use a proper video codec anyway, which are generally vastly more bandwidth- and power-efficient. (I freely admit the situation is messed up with video formats, with the only pretty-much-universally-supported codec, H.264, still being patent-encumbered. WebM is almost there now, with Safari for macOS having had it for just over a year on Safari 14.1+ and macOS 11.3+, but there’s still macOS 10.15 for a little longer and maybe Safari on iOS not supporting it (unclear), so you can’t quite go WebM. I will note incidentally that animated WebP is a thing too, and has slightly better support, back to Safari 14/macOS 11 with Safari 14 for iOS working too.)
- catach 4y ago
  > Animated images are mostly a terrible idea. Consider that insisting that a usecase is bad, and you should feel bad works against establishing credibility when offering alternative solutions for that usecase.
  - chownie 4y ago
    It's unkind and a little absurd to tone police by writing a strawman comment that's ruder than the actual one you're replying to.

habibur 4y ago

Interesting fact. Burn GIF called for using JPEG as alternative. And then some years later JPEG patent/payment issues came up. Leading to a short lived Burn JPEG movement too. Next alternate shown was PNG at that time.

lazyjeff 4y ago
Are you sure you recall correctly? The linked page recommends upgrading GIF to PNG, "the only reasonable alternative to paying the Unisys tax on the web is to upgrade graphics from GIF to PNG format", which makes sense because it's a lossless conversion. PNG was a new format back that, without much adoption. JPEG doesn't make sense as a substitute format for GIF, and would greatly increase the size and decrease the quality of files.
- habibur 4y ago
  PNG support was broken and partial on browsers at that time. People were waiting for PNG but it wasn't ready yet. Plus this wasn't the only page on burn GIF. This call was on thousands of sites. A viral movement from that time.

sombragris 4y ago

Ah, a trip down memory lane. I remember seeing that website and after that, I started using only PNG for losless compressed images. Still do to this day; I don't recall saving anything as a GIF.