Slashdot Mirror
The GIF Format is Finally Patent-Free
tonymercmobily writes "Not many people noticed that the GIF file format is only now free from patents, as of the 1st of October 2006. Quick recap: first in 1999 Unisys tried to extort money from users and developers. Then, in 2003 the world hoped that the saga would finally be over. Then, in 2004, it was IBM's turn. Now, the SAGA seems to be over for real! Does anybody find Unisys' page on GIF as hilarious as I do...?"
What I find genuinely hilarious, however, is the United State of America's Patent System.
My work here is dung.
When MNG (animated PNG) is supported by all major browsers, I probably won't use GIF for anything anymore.
I've written a small PNG encoder and found that for 1 and 4-bit grayscale images, PNG routinely trounces GIF. I expect a 4-bit palette color PNG would yield similar results. PNG's method of cramming multiple pixels per byte prior to compression seems to be much more effective than GIF judging by the file sizes - though I admit I've yet to take a hard look at GIF to discover exactly why.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I for one, don't think GIF is going anywhere. Limited to 256 colours, sure. Keep in mind GIF is one of the most well supported image formats out there, and in the same format we have both transparency (1-bit, at that) and animation. PNG is nice, but thanks to Microsoft, and it's own not supporting animation, it just doesn't work for some things yet.
I'm sure a big supporter of PNG, but understand why GIF is still around.
You mention that they are limited to 256 colors, but I think the real strength is that they can be limited to as few as two colors (or one and a transparency.) You can get crisp effects where they are needed (like black and white line art, or text) much better than the JPEG (which will do its best to bleed, in an effort to make the image look more like a photograph.)
It's also far more compact-- which is less of a concern for the end user now that dial-up modems are the exception rather than the rule, but can be a boon for a site concerned with bandwidth. And for simple animation it's far easier to create than a flash banner.
I prefer PNG myself-- but it's amazing how many users still have browsers that don't support it. Hell, it's amazing how many users don't have browsers that support flash for that matter. GIFs will always have a place with those who know the strength of the format.
The only thing it's used for these days is cheesy animated banner ads, but that's quickly being replaced with flash and java stuff.
First, that's just not true. Go to major web sites, look at the source, and search for ".gif". They're all over the fricken place. And who in their right mind would use Java for a bannar ad? I haven't noticed this, but the idea is completely retarded. Flash--- well Flash has its own problems. You need an expensive program to make them, and a special plug-in to view them. They can be better for certain purposes, especially if you want your ad to be interactive somehow, but if you just want to make a slideshow of completely different images, you're not going to beat animated GIFs for ease, or even size.
Professional Web developers, if they're any good, will use the proper tools for the job, and try to maximize compatibility as much as possible across different browsers. Use of plain HTML, CSS, JPEGs, and GIFs should be used the their maximum capability before looking to Javascript, and certainly before Java or Flash.