This list is so dumb.
“GIF” stands for “Graphic Interchange Format”. It is a de facto standard for images released by CompuServe in 1987.
Remember CompuServe? Of course you don’t. It is a really old online service kind of like America Online but older. But you all don’t remember that either. It’s like pre-Internet online shopping and social media with a Linux command line. Anyway, it’s old.
Other computery things that came out in 1987 include:
This little Macintosh computer with a nine inch black and white screen.
This gorgeous version of Microsoft Windows.
This svelte Nokia mobile phone.
I guess what I’m saying is GIF was maybe pretty decent in its day but today it is a pretty crappy format.
- it is 8 bit palette based meaning a single gif can show only 256 different colors at most. Consequently it can’t show full color images without ugly dithering.
- it uses an and old and naive approach to compression so it isn’t super efficient at saving space.
- it’s mechanism for animation is ridiculously naive. It’s just like a flip book. A pile of individual pictures that show one after another. This results in small images with poor quality and low frame rates that require more bandwidth than what you get from high quality animations in a decent format.
So why are they so popular?
In truth they aren’t. Because today when people say GIF they mean something different. They mean an image that:
- is animated
- is short
- has no audio
- plays inline on the page automatically and easily with no fussy controls
Sometimes it’s an actual GIF. But usually not because eventually the gif hosting sites realize they’re wasting tons of expensive bandwidth serving up these low quality animations in a ridiculously inefficient way so they use a different format instead.
I don’t know the internals of list app, but I’d bet money when you put a GIF in your list you’re actually getting an “H264” video with no audio track.
But it says GIF on the corner. And on the icon. And the service that gives them to you is called “Giphy”. And everyone says “I love GIFs” or “I hate GIFs”. And we argue about whether it is pronounced “GIF” or “JIF”.
I find it fascinating.
Words and meaning are way more powerful than RFCs and standards bodies.
And GIFs belong to people now, not to programmers.
And that is kind of cool.
But I still hate GIF.
Because it’s a crappy format.