back to article Welp, PEAK GIF is upon us! Facebook now supports animated images

Who knew Marissa Mayer could be so far ahead of the curve? Her company Yahoo! bought Tumblr back in 2013 when the Purple Palace seemingly recognised that it was crucial to back the animated .gif rebirth. A year later, Twitter joined the party by adding .gif support to its tweets. And now – in an effort to overload web traffic …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let's animate a boot!

    And raise a glass to Facebook's future success:

    There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let's animate a boot!

      Already been done (more or less).

    2. TheProf
      Angel

      Re: Let's animate a boot!

      Jebus! Lighten up. It's only animated pictures.

      1. Mark 85

        Re: Let's animate a boot!

        Jebus! Lighten up. It's only animated pictures Farcebook.

        FTFY.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Let's animate a boot!

          People still use browsers for Facebook?

          The app lets you disable videos, so I assume it'll do the same for GIFs. I'm not really concerned about it, it doesn't slow down the app on my iPhone when there are videos playing. There's no sound unless you activate it so I don't really care - in some respects it is better as there's a better chance of seeing whether I care to watch the video or not if I see part of playing as I scroll by.

  2. Andy Non Silver badge

    Easily fixed

    I disabled animation of gifs in Firefox long ago due to the annoying ones shown by El Reg! They make it difficult to read an article when something is flashing away in the corner of my eye.

    Type about:config in the address bar and find the entry image.animation_mode. double click it and set its value to none.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Easily fixed

      "Type about:config in the address bar and find the entry image.animation_mode. double click it and set its value to none."

      Thanks for that. I've probably learned more about the about:config options in El Reg comments than anywhere else :-)

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        Re: Easily fixed

        I use Opera. For the last X years, it's had "disable animated images" on a context menu available on a per-site or global basis.

        Roll on Vivaldi and the return of real browsers again.

      2. Rimpel

        Re: Easily fixed

        since the redesign of el reg I now block all images from regmedia

  3. Charles 9

    Whatever happened to MNG and ANG? Why are we sticking around with a patent-encumbered format that only supports 256 colors?

    1. the spectacularly refined chap

      Why are we sticking around with a patent-encumbered format that only supports 256 colors?

      The patents expired over ten years ago. Given the age of the format it is one of the few animation standards you can be clear is not encumbered by patents.

    2. M Gale

      >Whatever happened to MNG and ANG?

      webm happened, is what happened.

    3. Old Handle

      I think you mean MNG and APNG. In any case, I always suspected that the biggest reason they never caught on is because people couldn't agree on one or the other.

  4. Matthew Smith

    Yay! Let's party like its 1999. Now step back and watch my hamster dance.

    1. Haku

      For those lucky not to know the reference, it was a website that just played this on a continual loop: hamsterdance (YouTube)

      And if you didn't know and you watched the video, welcome to the hell of early internet meme's! It only got worse...

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Fibbles

    Numerous image sharing sites, most notably 4chan, have tried to replace gifs with webm videos. It's met a mixed response.

    The limitations of the gif format seem to enforce a briefness of expression that webm does not.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Possibly the greatest GIF mix of all time...

    ...and all the work of a single mad genius!

    Cyriak Animix

  7. Graham Marsden
    Facepalm

    "you might expect The Register to illustrate this story with an animated .gif of its own"

    Why? When they can annoy us with another massive, pointless (and massively pointless) Hero Image...

    1. choleric
      Meh

      Re: "you might expect The Register to illustrate this story with an animated .gif of its own"

      But just think, it could be a massive, pointless, dithered, and animated Hero Image...

      Small mercies and all that.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "you might expect The Register to illustrate this story with an animated .gif of its own"

      I see no Hero Images anymore since I installed the FF plugin "Remove this Permanently" so you can hide bits of websites you don't like.

      Now, if I could only find a way to stop the divs with fixed position staying in place when I scroll. I absolutely detest websites that 'permanently' fix logos/menu navigation to your browser window so they stay where they are when you scroll down, often obscuring the bits of page you're reading/looking at and almost always making the browser view window smaller, but the absolute worst thing about them is when doing pinch-zoom on FF on Android they still stay in place but get bigger and take up so much more of the viewing area.

      1. Rimpel
        Thumb Up

        Hide the fixed menu

        Ok so unfortunately it's site specific but to block the fixed menu bar here on the register use the 'uBlock origin' add on (it probably works in adblock plus too but I use pale moon so I don't use it). Add the following to 'My filters'

        www.theregister.co.uk###top_nav

        forums.theregister.co.uk###top_nav

        bliss!

  8. choleric
    Childcatcher

    Users. No, people! No ...

    "Facebook will allow its 1.4 BEELLION users (sorry, people)"

    I think you mean "products". 1.4 BEELLION individually probed, examined, analyzed, and monetized products. "How many humans (sorry, products) would you like to buy today?"

    1. stucs201
      Coat

      I think what you mean is...

      ..."all your face are belong to us".

      (sorry, I'll get it now - yes the one with the book about ancient internet memes in the pocket)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook R&D is awe inspiring

    Animated GIF's are a browser-supported function - how much engineering does it takes on Facebook's side to host an image with a different file extension?

    Lucky they have billions in investor dollars to develop incredible technological advances like this. Sky's the limit on what's next, maybe they'll support changing font size on your status message?

  10. JP19

    Seems appropriate

    http://tinyurl.com/kymadu2

  11. Sixtysix

    Uses FLASH to deliver...

    Really? In this day and age?

    At least I'll not see the damn things - no flash installed on my boxen.

  12. This post has been deleted by its author

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