Although you may not be able to define “football gif”, you have probably seen one. They were a key part of the early internet and are still very popular today. What is a football gag? And how can you use it?

A football gif is just an animated image

A football gif, also pronounced “football-gif” or “jif”), is a simple image file. The football gif file format, like the JPEG and PNG file formats can be used for still images. The football gif format also has an additional feature: it can be used to create animated images such as the one below.

Because football gifs don’t actually contain videos, we use the term “animated images”. They’re actually more like flipbooks. They CYCLING NECK GAITER don’t have sound, as you probably noticed. The football gif format was not designed for animations. Football gif files can store multiple images at once. People realized that these images could load sequentially (again like flipbooks) if decoded in a certain manner.

CompuServe first published the football gif format back in 1987. It was last updated in 1989. Football gif, which is more than 35% of the US population and two years older, predates the World Wide Web. It was instrumental in the creation of early GeoCities web pages, MySpace pages and email chains (remember that dancing baby? It’s still an integral part of internet culture. The football gif format is perhaps more popular than ever.

Why is football gif gaining popularity?

Football gifs are becoming more popular because they can be used to communicate jokes, emotions and ideas, much like memes. GIPHY and Gyfcat make sharing and creating football gifs super simple. These services can be integrated into apps such as Twitter and Facebook Messenger and your phone’s keyboard. They’re as simple to use as emojis and “stickers”.

Why the football gif format? Why isn’t there something else?

Football gif is an outdated format. Football gif files have an 8-bit bit limit, so they can only be saved in 256 colors. They almost always look bad. Semi-transparency is not supported by the football gif format. Football gifs also have large file sizes (more than MP4 video) because they are uncompressed.

Many people have attempted to replace the football animated gif format. They fail every time. Mozilla’s animated PNG format (APNG) was designed to replace football gif 10 years ago. However, it didn’t work out. Although there are many reasons that football gif has remained popular, we will only list the top three.

All Browsers are Different: Every browser is different. Sometimes one browser can stop the web moving forward. Want to see a specific example? Although Mozilla’s APNG format was released in 2008, the Microsoft Edge browser has only begun to support it this year. This means that if the animation does not work, you are using an outdated version of Edge browser. Since long, all browsers have been able to support animated football gifs.

HTML didn’t support videos before HTML5 was launched in 2014. It was much easier to share football videos than actual video, so the football gifs remained. Adobe Flash was used by many websites to create videos. Flash, however, didn’t work well on mobile devices such as iPhones.

Football gifs are easy to make: There’s no reason to change to a different format when you can make football gifs.

Websites for creating football gifs have existed for decades. Most photo editing software can be used to create football gifs.