the.com/gif
a 35-year-old image format that won the internet by refusing to die
means A bitmap image file format that supports simple animation by stringing frames into a loop, now shorthand for any short, soundless looping clip passed around online.
from An acronym for Graphics Interchange Format, coined in 1987 by a team at the online service CompuServe led by Steve Wilhite. The format used LZW compression to keep early downloads small — a real virtue when images crawled in over dial-up modems. Wilhite famously insisted the word is pronounced with a soft 'g,' like the peanut butter 'Jif,' a ruling much of the internet has cheerfully ignored ever since.
- pronunciation
- creator says jif; the world says gif; war continues
- age
- born 1987, older than the web itself
- color limit
- capped at 256 colors per frame
- silent loop
- carries no audio, loops forever anyway
- patent fight
- a 1990s lawsuit nearly killed it dead
dancing baby — 3d rendered infant from 1996 that became the first viral internet meme, featured in ally mcbeal
nyan cat — animated cat with pop-tart body flying through space, uploaded 2011 with 200+ million views
loading bar — rotating hourglass cursor from windows 95-xp, used as gif in countless websites since 1995