A Short History of the GIF

When I first glimpsed an animated GIF on a Web site (Apple.com circa 1996), I felt like Galileo: “It moves!” Now I’m the cranky old man who says, “In my day, I could compose a whole trip to England [for British Airways] in 9.9kb! I was an LZW poet, I tell you!” And so, of course, Moving The Still is right up my posterized alley.

5 thoughts on “A Short History of the GIF

  1. Good to know it’s pronounced like the peanut butter, since that’s how I’ve always said it. I feel profoundly vindicated after years of derision and marginalization by hard-G snobs. (No offense to Jeremy.)
    [I’ll go to my grave giving it a hard “G”. I once heard someone say “You don’t say ‘Guh-PEG,'” and I thought, “Damn straight.” –J.]

  2. Hard-g “GIF” came when web designers first wanted to show pixel animation. Was very strange for those of us who frequented the graphics boards on CompuServe, but the new folks were so adamant….
    (Does Vimeo not support GIFs…?)

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