4 ms·

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'

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.
    - catach 4y ago
      Your interpretation of my comment is so far from my intent that I must conclude that I have failed to communicate effectively.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      "Animated images are mostly a terrible idea" is in the original comment
      - chownie 4y ago
        And where's "you should feel bad" ?
- brian-armstrong 4y ago
  Using video formats for animated icons (think emojis) is an especially bad idea. Have fun loading a page of 50 different h264 instances!
  - jbboehr 4y ago
    I tried this once for animated video thumbnails in a feed. It was about as awful as you can imagine.

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.
  - catach 4y ago
    Your interpretation of my comment is so far from my intent that I must conclude that I have failed to communicate effectively.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    "Animated images are mostly a terrible idea" is in the original comment
    - chownie 4y ago
      And where's "you should feel bad" ?
brian-armstrong 4y ago
Using video formats for animated icons (think emojis) is an especially bad idea. Have fun loading a page of 50 different h264 instances!
- jbboehr 4y ago
  I tried this once for animated video thumbnails in a feed. It was about as awful as you can imagine.