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...?"

Just in time...

[xENoLocO]

... for it to be obsolete.

Re:Just in time...

[creepynut]

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.

Re:Just in time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not supporting animation is PNG's greatest benefit!

Re:Just in time...

[JourneyExpertApe]

But how are people going to know that their computers are infected with 10,342 viruses and spyware if they don't see the vibrating, flashing, and really convincing message box at the top of the webpage?

Re:Just in time...

[The MAZZTer]

When MNG (animated PNG) is supported by all major browsers, I probably won't use GIF for anything anymore.

Re:Just in time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bow down before MNG the merciless!

Re:

[vadim_t]

Pity the library is so annoying though. I was looking at using it in a small game and found this:

http://www.3-t.com/libmng/faq.html#id-1040 [3-t.com]

It's horribly annoying, I thought "screw it", and went with plain PNG.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

from the linked page:

There's no easy way (yet). You should keep in mind that the structure of MNG allows for multiple loops and also unlimited loops. These kind of animations would generate an endless amount of frames, since the end of the file is never reached. There's a big difference with simple GIF files! MNG gives you more power, but also makes it a little more difficult to know what's going to happen further down the file.

So what they're saying is that you can create multiple loops and script t

Re:

[NeMon'ess]

That quote makes it sound like it supports different loops that can be sequenced together. Meaning a dancing animation could have loops of moves that play in a scripted order, instead of always the same routine repeating. That make for a smaller, and more dynamic file.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

So what they're saying is that you can create multiple loops and script them up or something?

That quote makes it sound like it supports different loops that can be sequenced together.

Yeah, I didn't say that very well, but I didn't contradict it either.

The point remains; a GIF animation can have an unlimited number of displayed frames, pulling from the same set of frames repeatedly. A MNG may be able to have more loops, but in the end, all of the source information must be in the file and it must b

Re:

[macshit]

I dunno, libpng seems ok. I've written image loading support for a lot of formats, and pretty much every image library seems to have a similar interface level -- essentially, they try not to make any assumptions about what internal format you will use for storing your image in memory, so a "load the whole thing" type of interface often won't fly.

In my case, it's just as well because I have my own constraints, so I'd have to either ignore their high-level all-in-one code, or end up translating the in-memory

Re:Just in time...

[value_added]

When MNG (animated PNG) is supported by all major browsers, I probably won't use GIF for anything anymore.

Not being a web developer, I'm not familiar with the features and benefits of MNGs, but if they're at all similar to animated GIFs, I hope Firefox's image.animation_mode=none setting will apply when visiting the web sites you design.

Re:Just in time...

[Carewolf]

No. Konqueror is the only browser to natively support MNGs, all other browsers need plugins. Mozilla used to some years ago, but they removed native support when no one used MNG.

Re:

[OverlordQ]

Mozilla used to some years ago, but they removed native support when no one used MNG.

Not true, they removed it due to the fact that they had nobody that could maintain the code.

Re:

[arth1]

As far as I remember, Mozilla removed MNG because of bloat and instability.

Ah, yes:
http://steelgryphon.com/blog/?p=14 [steelgryphon.com]
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19528 0 [mozilla.org]

Re:

[petermgreen]

"RAW" (which btw doesn't describe any one format but a multitude of vendor specific formats) is used to get the pics out of a digicam in a form that loses as little information from the CCD as possible and doesn't introduce redundancy (because of the way color CCDs work converting thier output to a traditional raster format is basically gauranteed to introduce redundancy)

but while "RAW" is the best format for storing digicam originals it is next to useless for anything else. So anyone who edits images or ob

Re:

[jZnat]

When [and if] APNG gets accepted into the normal PNG standard, anything using libpng will have support for APNG pretty much automatically.

Check out this mung!

[Asmor]

That's gonna be a fun file type to say out loud...

"Dude, check out this mung!"

Re:

[Eideewt]

Except it's pronounced "ming". Just like PNG is "ping".

Re:Just in time...

[mugnyte]

Dude, GIF for animations?

  Like spinning arrows marking paragraphs?
  Howabout dancing pokemon?
  Forum avatar images that flash, blink and jump?
  Emoticons that wink and wave?

  Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?

  There are two metaphors here people are used to: Static reading mode, and TV mode. Combining the two is a no no. Do NOT animate portions of a reading metaphor (over-stimuli), and do NOT ask people to just read words via video (under-stimuli).

  The same goes for sound. If people want to listen to something, OFFER it to them, and let them control the start and stop of it. Playing sounds unasked on a web page is just...trashy. Animations are no different.

  HINT: Adblock is popular for a reason. Even IE6 allows one to stop GIFs from animating.

Re:Just in time...

[jthill]

I have two [googlepages.com] answers [ytmnd.com].

Re:Just in time...

[OakDragon]

And let's not forget... Hamster Dance [webhamster.com]!

Hmmm... don't know why it wants QuickTime...

Re:

[rucs_hack]

that's not the original music is it? I don't remember it being that jazzed up. Shame, otherwise I'd archive it.

Roger Miller - Whistle Stop

[tepples]

that's not the original music is it?

The original music from Hampster Dance is a sample from "Whistle Stop" performed by Roger Miller, sped up 70% (as if a 45 RPM vinyl record were being played at 78 RPM). This song originally appeared as the theme song from Disney's animated feature film Robin Hood, and when Hampster Dance went commercial, it might have proven cheaper to cover the song (as Cuban Boys did with "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia") than to license Miller's recording.

Re:

[truthsearch]

Thanks. You just lowered my IQ. I wish I didn't click on those links.

Re:

[TheSpoom]

Wait, you're talking about GIFs here? I thought you were referring to MySpace.

Re:

[daniil]

Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?

Dude. Inlined animated gifs are like the bestest thing ever [imageshack.us]! Pity that Slashdot doesn't allow inlining images...

Re:

[pete6677]

What do you think Slashdot would look like if trolls were able to post images directly in their post? Remember the days of constant goatse trolls?

Re:

[daniil]

More colorful, perhaps? Unfortunately, you're right. We can't have nice things around here because someone will find a way to abuse them.

Re:

[daniil]

And yes, for a moment, I was tempted to post a NSFW gif image instead of the cat in a hole one.

Re:

[nine-times]

Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?

Yes, it has allowed me to view small animations with a limited number of frames and colors in my web browser with very little overhead.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?

Animation is useful to draw the user's attention to something. It's frequently overused, but that doesn't mean it's a bad technology. I mean, there's probably more viewers of the O'Reilly Report than of the educational program of your choice but it doesn't make Television itself evil, just the news media :P

Re:

[notque]

I mean, there's probably more viewers of the O'Reilly Report

It's the factor, and it's losing ratings like crazy ever since Keith Olberman decided to stand up for what he (we) beileve in.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, I just saw 'im on that ol' MSNBC while in Vegas for business, and I was actually really impressed. I'd watch that show again if I could get TV where I live. I mean it's not like I agree with everything he said, but it was more than any other political pundit that's not on Comedy Central.

It's really amazing to me the quality of news that comes off comedy central. Just watched Musharraf on there, it was a pretty good interview I thought. And funny :) But CC is owned by Viacom, it's not like they're

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

" Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?"

On the CG forums I visit people frequently show animated how-to's using animated .GIFs.

Re:

[Trogre]

Animation does have other uses you know, often to convey information that would be very difficult on a static page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_moves [wikipedia.org]
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/traffic/signa ls/vl-v.html [homepages.cwi.nl]

As is most often the case, it's not the format that's the problem, it's what people use it for:
http://www.citilink.com/~grizzly/anigifs/itchy.gif [citilink.com]

Re:

[gkhan1]

Wait, wait... is that who I think it is? Magus? From Chrono Trigger? Damn, that was a good game...

Re:Just in time...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I cannot seem to make PNGs get as small as GIFs. Am I doing something wrong, or what? PNG also allows channelized colors, and AFAIK it supports at least an 8 bit palleted mode... but nonetheless, if I am posting say a screenshot of a dialog (not my whole desktop mind you) the GIF is something like a quarter the size of the PNG in every case.

Re:

[metamatic]

Well, I assume you're reducing the image to 256 colors before writing it as PNG, to get a sensible comparison to GIF.

Maybe your graphics program only writes badly-compressed PNGs? There's a program called pngcrush which will losslessly optimize PNGs written by crap software.

Re:Just in time...

[prmths]

Now that it's october 1 and unisys cant kill me anymore... i propose we expand on gif to be capable of a whopping 512 colors! that's right... 9 bit color! who's with me?

Re:

[nine-times]

I don't know.... 512 seems like too many for me. Can we do 8 1/2 bit color?

Re:

[Kelson]

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.

I'd only count the lack of animation as a cause. Microsoft hasn't done anything to hamper PNG as a GIF replacement. IE has been able to read indexed PNGs (<=256 colors) with binary transparency for years. That's identical in capabilities to a static GIF.

For a GIF-equivalent PNG, you have to go all the way b

...but it's not obsolete.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

GIF is still usually a SMALLER format than PNG if you want to display a few-color, non-lossy image. If you're dealing with bandwidth issues and lots of users, it can add up.

Evidence?

[eddy]

Evidence? Except for 1x1 images and the like, you're wrong. And you shouldnt' be using 1x1 images anyhow so...

Before sending any examples, make sure you're comparing same-depth images and have used pngout [advsys.net].

I once, as a demonstration, took a review off HardOCP and converted/recompressed all their GIFs into PNG, and saved several hundreds of kilobytes.

Still webmasters continue to use GIF because of ignorance.

Re:

[binarybum]

I think this depends on the software used to save the image. perhaps pngout does a good job, but with most programs I've used including photoshop, PNG usually creates larger file sizes. I'm willing to bet that if there was a forced shift to png right now we'd see a significant bit of bandwidth wasted.

Re:

[jZnat]

That's why you use "Save for Web" in Adobe Photoshop; it basically pngcrush's it.

Re:

[binarybum]

no. At least in 7.0 I still usually get larger pngs with save for web compared to gifs.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I've been trying this and I still have yet to get better results with PNG out of Adobe.

Re:Evidence?

[nine-times]

Well, it might be partially due to ignorance. I think many people don't know that there are different bit-depths for PNG, which (obviously) result in files of different sizes. I mean, there are other optimizations as well, but my point is that many web developers don't realize that you can make PNGs smaller.

But also there are support issues. PNG wasn't supported [well] in old browsers, and many web developers don't like to drop support for those browsers until it's necessary. Since little is lost by using GIF, they use GIF.

Re:

[tuffy]

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.

but really....

[celardore]

This doesn't affect the average user, or even creator of GIFs. I imagine that companies like Adobe would not have to pay a royalty any longer, but this saving is unlikely to be passed to purchasers of image software.

Hilarious? USPTO is Hilarious

[eldavojohn]

Does anybody find Unisys' page on GIF as hilarious as I do...?

What's so hilarious about it? It plainly states that the patents have expired and that they have more patents based on the technology. I find it sad that their legal department found that necessary.

What I find genuinely hilarious, however, is the United State of America's Patent System.

Happy October 1st

[xsarpedonx]

October 1st came early this year...

Re:Happy October 1st

[mcmonkey]

Not many people noticed that the GIF file format is only now* free from patents

*For large values of 'now'

Re:

[richdun]

GWB heard that a King of England decreed a whole week or so out of the month of September when England switch from Julian to Gregorian calendars, and thought he should do the same as we switch from nuclear time to nuculear time.

Eh, it's Friday. I'm not thinking too hard. That's the best I could come up with.

Re:

[ehrichweiss]

Maaaaybeee because you're the only one paying attention? Seriously, you're not talking about one single person doing this, it's many people and you just happen to have the reality tunnel that likes to notice it. Lighten up.

Re:

[Keith Russell]

Why does everything have to be tied in to GWB?

Because he's the President of the United States of America. Ridicule comes with the office. Eight years ago, you couldn't escape jokes about stained dresses. Sixteen years ago, every GHWB reference ended with "Wouldn't be prudent. Not at this juncture." It's a time-honoured tradition.

Re:

[Rob T Firefly]

Crap! I read the headline, got so excited I infringed the GIF patent all over the place, and I've only just now checked the calendar. Hide me, Slashdot!

Re:

[HRH King Lerxst]

Eternal September is over?

What??

[Headcase88]

Slashdot posted something two days early?? *head explodes*

well

[macadamia_harold]

As lame as this whole thing was, if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't have the PNG standard today.

Re:

[noidentity]

Yeah, the lack of true 16-bit and 24-bit support in GIF would never have spurred the development of something better. Try again.

reading comprehension

[macadamia_harold]

Yeah, the lack of true 16-bit and 24-bit support in GIF would never have spurred the development of something better. Try again.

I'm not saying it wouldn't have ever happened. I'm saying we wouldn't have it TODAY.

Re:

[ehrichweiss]

well if you can show me how jpg is animated or that the animated PNG, aka MNG, is fully supported in browsers, I'll grant you "better" otherwise there are just tools that are better for different uses. Color depth isn't always the biggest concern any more than is a format being capable of animation.

no.

[Heem]

Does anybody find Unisys' page on GIF as hilarious as I do...? .....No

Re:

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

LZW ain't enough.
The gzip compression likely ain't enough.
The bzip2 compression, might work. Getting IBM's permission to add arithmetic coding (like bzip version 1) would help more.
Adding bzip2 (or bzip) to PNG would be nice.

No one in the know uses .gz anymore, they use .bz2

Re:no.

[drew]

No one in the know uses .gz anymore, they use .bz2

Not entirely true. gzip is substantially faster and less processor intensive than bzip2, and is still commonly used where speed is as important as size. gzip is also more suitable for compressing streams than bzip2, which operates on large blocks, if I remember correctly. For those reasons, gzip is still heavily if not exclusively used for on the wire compresson, for example in transparent compression of http pages or cvs downloads.

Re:

[jthill]

I believe range coding is just as effective as arithmetic coding, faster, and patent-free. And there's this "Quantized Indexing" [1stworks.com] method that's supposed to be better and much faster.

Patents, the world, and Certicom

[Ckwop]

Of course, like most on here, I will relish the day that the LZW patent expires. But look at how long that took to expire. Every day someone patents yet another obvious invention and it holds everybody back.

Take the Certicom 'Patents' on Eliptic Curve cryptography (ECC). Certicom act as if they own ECC - the write it on practically everything [certicom.com] they publish.

Yet on close analysis their patents give them almost no real control of ECC. The long and short of it that anything that operates on GF(p) is not covered.

The consequences of this is that NOBODY is using ECC, despite the fact that it's faster and has shorter keys. The whole field is held back for 20 years and nobody can make any progress.

It's not even used in Europe where these patents don't exist. Let me repeat this: The fact that some jerk of a company says it's theirs means the *whole* world doesn't use me.

I really wonder what goes through the minds of these poeple. Nobody wants to pay a fucktard like Certicom (tm) for a license for their mathematics. Nobody in the history of cryptography has made any serious amount of money from selling a security scheme. Why bother?

Simon

Re:

[nine-times]

The worst thing, in my mind, is the fact that some of these things are ambiguous, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. Take MP3, for example: I've heard from lots of people that you need to buy a license to use MP3, or you'll get sued. A little research, and it seems that there are lots of people who own patents related to MP3, and one of these companies which holds one of these patents has said that they want to get paid. Now, as far as I can tell, (and IANAL), this only applies to people who

Re:

[Chris Pimlott]

That's besides the point. The purpose of patents is to encourage technological progress and development, yet in the situation of elipical curves patents have only served to retard development in the field.

Re:

[HappyEngineer]

It doesn't look too obvious to me.

Are you a cryptographer or a mathematician? Patents don't need to be obvious to everyone for them to be obvious. They only need to be obvious to an expert in that field.

If 1000 different electrical engineers come up with idea X at the same time, that idea shouldn't be patentable even if the idea is utterly non-obvious to non-engineers.

GIF Patent Retrospect

[coaxial]

Looking back at the whole GIF patent saga, I believe Shakespear said it best. Much ado about nothing.

GIF Transparency

[Doc Ruby]

Does anyone have any estimates of how much Unisys collected in blackmail^Wlicensing fees on GIF? And any analyst estimates on the costs of producing, defending and prosecuting that "submarine patent" [everything2.com]?

Is the flagship submarine patent really worth the money Unisys sank into it? Worth the money the US government spent protecting it? Worth it to "the progress of science and useful arts" [findlaw.com]?

Thank god and the patent office

[Ancient_Hacker]

Finally, I can now sleep soundly, knowing the flaming torches on by web site are -fully legal- flaming torches.

If you haven't noticed....

[ravee]

Gimp already allows saving images in Gif format. It didn't earlier because of patent issues. It is nice really because now we can create banners which are less than 2k in size - even just a couple of hundred bytes.

But I do find that saving images in gif using gimp creates larger size image compared to saving the same image using say photoshop. I have sometimes wondered why this happens ....

Wonders of the GIF.

[Jerk City Troll]

In addition to flashing banner ads and stylish web sites [homestarrunner.com], the Graphical Interchange Format has brough us another important wonder.

Your The Man Now, Dog [ytmnd.com].

Imagine if we never had such a format. Would YTMND even be possible? We can only speculate, but I, for one, would like to thank Unisys for this valuable contribution. Afterall, 361,984—and growing—YTMND sites can't be wrong!

I guess this is ok...

[symbolic]

But it's too bad there isn't more excitement about more modern (and more functional) formats like SVG.

What about TIFF?

[TheMatt]

Isn't TIFF's patent mess now over as well? And if so, when will I be able to view TIFFs in Firefox? Soon? Please? Question mark?

Re:

[Intron]

Same patent is for LZW in gif and TIFF [scantips.com].

Re:

[Richard Steiner]

Killed the format? It's still one of the most common image formats on the web...

The only thing I know that might kill the format is the fact that it's limited to 256 colors.

Re:killed the format

[russ1337]

I just found this from our friend wikipedia:

PNG [Portable Network Graphics] was created to both improve upon and replace the GIF format with an image file format that does not require a patent license to use.

so, with a free alternative, why use GIF up to now?

I also did a quick search of common file types on Google*

GIF 519,000,000

JPG 777,000,000

JPEG 111,000,000

BMP 44,700,000

PNG 111,000,000

So GIF is not all _that_ dead. * = Results could mean anything really - PNG could be Paupua New Gunnea, and BMP could be best manufacturing practices.

Two reasons left

[xant]

1) Pre-IE7 versions of IE do not support transparent PNG without hacks. The hacks are not terribly difficult to implement, but if you don't like hacks, and you need transparent images, you might use GIF. OTOH, you might not: GIF only supports on/off transparency. That means a pixel is either completely transparent or completely opaque. Lots of things like soft shadows only look right with the alpha transparency of PNG. This argument will gradually fade away as IE7 gains widespread adoption. It isn't m

Re:

[Drachemorder]

In my book, being limited to 256 colors is a show stopper for all but the simplest and smallest images. Anything with more than a trivial degree of complexity in its color composition is, to my eyes, absolutely and irredeemably ugly when it gets downsampled to 256 colors. It used to be an acceptable compromise for shorter load times, but that is a much less significant issue these days than it once was. Now I can't see any excuse for ugly dithered images.

Re:

[Smidge204]

Properly made GIF images are almost always smaller than PNG images of comparable bit-depth and features, except PNG does not support animation. If you have a simple image with only a few colors, GIF is still the best choice because it is small and fully supported by everything.

Professional web designers should use the best tool for the job, not what's hip and trendy.
=Smidge=

Re:killed the format

[nine-times]

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.

Re:

[K8Fan]

The only thing it's used for these days is cheesy animated banner ads.

Run-length-encoding is just plain better for images with areas of solid color, like cartoons. JPEG-type compression sucks for images with areas of solid colors and hard transitions. Sure, I could find some variant of PNG that would work, but could I be sure that it would work on every browser? The great part about GIF is that I know it will appear, and I don't have to worry that some browser out there might not impliment the pallette-b

Re:

[grazzy]

If you think jpg is a replacement for gif I can tell you're obviously not anyone working with graphics. On any level.

Re:killed the format

[nine-times]

JPEG isn't a replacement for GIF. 8-bit PNG serves pretty well as a replacement under many circumstances, but it's not supported as ubiquitously, nor does it support animation. Java and Javascript have nothing to do with it, and flash is fine for some animations, but it's certainly no less encumbered by IP restrictions than GIF.

Let's say you have a 4 color raster logo. Are you going to make a JPEG? That'd be dumb. Let's say you have that same logo, and you want to animate it for 3 frames. What's a better solution than animated GIF?

Re:

[ultranova]

8-bit PNG serves pretty well as a replacement under many circumstances, but it's not supported as ubiquitously, nor does it support animation

Good. There's few Web features I hate as much as moving, flashing things in a page of text. They draw the eye towards themselves, and make concentrating on text harder. The only ones who use them are ad banner makers and web "designers" who are too young to shave.

Re:

[nine-times]

That's just not true. I know everyone here is trying to sound cool by saying, "Animated GIFs are teh 5uXx0rs!!!11! You probably use MIDIs on all your pages!"

Yes, the technology has limited practical use, but that's not the same as no use whatsoever. Just like many other technologies in the early days, animated GIFs were overused in horrible designs. But does the existence of a "BLINK" tag mean that all HTML was bad?

Sometimes people use animated GIFs as actual content, and not part of some needless fla

Re:

[wirelessbuzzers]

Parent is troll, but I'll bite.

Everything runs fine with jpg, java, javascript, and flash.

Java and Javascript are not image formats. Flash is much broader, is a non-accessible resource hog, and is most commonly used for irritating ads (not unlike animated GIFs, I suppose).

That leaves JPEG, which is actually an image format, but a totally different one. GIF was designed, for logos: it is lossless, has a very limited color palette, and allows for some amount of transparency. JPEG was designed for photos: i

Re:

[steveit_is]

Are you an skillfull troll, or an ignorant ass? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

The 'vendors' did pay licensing, until something better came along (png). Thanks to Unisys contracts* though, Microsoft never provided proper support for PNG.

* Ask yourself why Microsoft never had to pay gif licensing fees when everyone else did, and PNG alpha layer support stayed broken through 3 versions of Internet Explorer.

Re:

[Ant P.]

I think it's for the same reason they left HTML, CSS and Javascript support similarly crippled, while providing perfect VBscript and ActiveX support.

Stolen? Try given away.

[micromuncher]

LZW was published in IEEE in '84 by Welsh. It did not mention the patent. Some have argued this made the algorithm public knowledge. Unisys applied for the patent in '83, but did not enforce it until '89 WHEN IT WAS WIDELY ADOPTED. A lot of people that helped its adoption did so under the impression it was patent free.

So... how can it be stolen... if it was given away?

Re:

[Trixter]

"how can it be stolen... if it was given away?"

You've obviously never dealt with IP lawyers.

Re:

[micromuncher]

OK; bunch of you nay sayers say "ignorance of the law" is no excuse. But this isn't a case of ignorance. Two important things; disclosure and prior art. Its the same reason why Coke doesn't publish the recipe; because disclosure of a recipe (algorithm in our case) is mixing things from the domain of common knowledge. Nothing Lempel, Ziv, and/or Welsh did was unqiue. Sliding windows and dictionary substitutions for compression; I have published ACM algorithms from '68 that have similar concepts. Course

Ogg?

[Poromenos1]

If you mean Vorbis, then yeah, there will be no reason, apart from the *much* better quality at the same bitrate. I'd like to see mp3 be audible at 4 kbps (as vorbis does with floggy) :P

Re:

[bluefoxlucid]

Except that Ogg Vorbis typically gets good rates around 70-90Kbit/s and MP3 gets comparable rates around 160-192kbit/s. When SBR becomes unencumbered (patented in 2003, will expire in what 14 years? 2017?) MP3Pro won't need such licensing and will fall in with Ogg Vorbis; but Ogg Vorbis will pull ahead by a large amount as well and probably show 30-60Kbit/s rates!

Besides, Vorbis handles a bunch of stuff MP3 doesn't, such as a large number of channels (MP3 handles Mono, Stereo, Joint Stereo; Vorbis handle