Why gifs

There are many online tools to do just this, but they are not suitable for converting any more than a handfull of GIFs. For that, there is a simple and very powerful tool called ffmpeg.

Now converting a GIF to a video can be done using the command line :. Its also quite a delight to see the change in file size once your GIF gets converted into a video. Internet speed has increased in general, is it worth doing all this work for a few megabytes here and there? Almost always. Sure, one or two GIFs on your site may not make much of a difference, but when you have a blog or a funny content site with many GIFs loading one after the other, that difference can really add up.

Additionally, in a world where users are increasingly shifting towards mobile devices with limited bandwidth, making them download almost 10 times the volume of content for no good reason almost seems like a crime.

Like what I write? Join my mailing list, and I'll let you know whenever I write another post. No spam, I promise! Written by Soham Kamani , an author ,and a full-stack developer who has extensive experience in the JavaScript ecosystem, and building large scale applications in Go. He is an open source enthusiast and an avid blogger. You should follow him on Twitter. Already know why GIFs suck and want to know about a solution? Go here The origin and intent of the GIF Ironically, even though I am calling GIFs inefficient today, the reason they got so popular back in the day is because they were efficient.

Whether you are using something pulled from GIPHY or something created on your own, GIFs in email campaigns can be used as call-to-actions, make them more attractive and make them stand out more.

GIFs can help give your brand more personality. Engaging with your community over social media is one of the best practices for successful social media. It makes your brand more approachable which promotes interaction. Interaction in turn promotes the growth of your community as the communities of those you are interacting with become introduced to you through their timelines.

So, why the hell are GIFs so popular? How do you make GIFs work for you? So, people love GIFs — where does that leave you? GIFs are fun, but they can also be an effective tool. Loading Comments Email Required Name Required Website. Three decades ago, on June 15, , the most beloved image file extension on the internet was birthed by a team of CompuServe developers seeking a way to compress images with minimal data loss.

The solution: the GIF, a simple, flexible file format for lower-resolution pictures. The internet was awash in garish designs, thanks to websites with noisy wallpaper backgrounds, Comic Sans font, and the ubiquitous Website Under Construction sign.

Netscape was the first browser to allow the user to interact with an image on a website instead of just text — meaning you could click on an image and have it link you to another webpage or new information. And when Netscape Navigator 2. Thus, if you wanted an easy way to decorate your website, GIFs, whether static or animated, were simple and available. Plus, when compared to other file formats, these early GIFs took up very little space on your hard drive and required very little bandwidth to download.

Early GIFs revealed two crucial things about the format: It was easy to pass around, and no matter how many frames it contained, it could be looped an infinite number of times, for an infinite supply of delight.

As web design evolved during the early s, the GIF largely fell out of favor except among meme fans, due to the popular conception that GIFs were tacky and garish.

Web 2. It emphasized less Flash-heavy design, better load times, and more elegant, prettier web pages. By , all of the existing patents on licensing for the GIF had expired, and the format essentially entered the public domain. The combination of fewer legal restrictions on the GIF and a broader, smartphone-boosted demand for a simple, quick, and more lightweight substitute for Flash animation brought the GIF back in a major way.

GIF editing was becoming more advanced thanks to the growing accessibility of editing software like Photoshop, and people were beginning to convert video into GIF formats in order to quickly present video images. Meanwhile, the advent of YouTube in had begun to spur the confluence of meme culture with emerging vlogger culture and celebrity culture, and the GIF was there to capture it all.

And then came the onset of social media, and lo, GIFs were everywhere. Reddit, Twitter, and Tumblr launched in , , and respectively, and each of them played major roles in shifting the culture of social media toward the use of GIFs — especially the image-friendly Tumblr, where GIFs could be uploaded in sets of up to 10 images at once. On Tumblr, GIF sets were frequently elaborate, and people used them to tell stories or encapsulate and circulate current news.