
apngasm - FOSS Animated PNG tools and APNG standardization - GravityWell
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/374397522/apngasm-foss-animated-png-tools-and-apng-standardi
======
derefr
A bit of history on this:

All APNG has ever really needed to build a sustainable momentum is--like most
other web features--a plurality of web browser support. These days, that
usually means "supported in both Firefox and Chrome." Until that happens,
nobody has any reason to create APNGs, because you can't stick them in your
cutesy forum signature and expect other people using the website to see what
you see.

Firefox already has APNG support; Chrome is the hold-out here. It's mostly
because Google only want to use the "official" libpng. libpng, though, is
intentionally a minimalist reference implementation! The PNG group will never
accept the APNG patches into the official libpng, because that would distract
from libpng's purpose in being a reference for how to encode/decode PNGs. And
Google don't want to apply the APNG patches themselves, because that means,
basically, supporting their own fork of libpng.

In other words, what's really been needed this whole time isn't "better
authoring tools" (create consumption tools, and authoring tools will follow)
but rather for some large organization to get behind maintaining and
supporting a regular release of "current libpng with apng patches." Big
enough, at least, for Google to feel as confident in their work as they do the
PNG group's.

The easy solution, of course, would be to split out the work Mozilla is
_already doing_ in maintaining _their_ "current libpng with apng patches" from
Gecko into a separate project, and let both Mozilla and Google (and Apple and
Microsoft and whoever else) be consumers for that project. If there's anything
to get done, it's that.

~~~
cromwellian
Seems to me that animated WebP would be better for short video sequences (3-6
seconds) than APNG anyway. People are dumping animated GIFs all over social
networks now, and a lot of them weigh in at anywhere from 300k to 2MB, which
is somewhat ridiculous, especially on mobile.

However, Google (Blink) themselves rejected WebP animation
([http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57594084-93/blink-
leaders-r...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57594084-93/blink-leaders-
reject-animated-webp-images-in-chrome-for-now/)) due to performance concerns.

Which brings up an interesting dilemma, which is balancing network performance
with CPU or rendering performance.

We need a format that's optimal for mobile network transport, optimal for
decoding speed, and optimal for rendering and memory. ;-)

~~~
derefr
Animation and video are different things.

Here's an animated GIF used for animation:
[http://i.imgur.com/rwUt664.gif](http://i.imgur.com/rwUt664.gif)

Here's an animated GIF used for video:
[https://mediacru.sh/demo](https://mediacru.sh/demo)

Obviously, in the video case, a real video format wins, and if social networks
let us upload videos with the same filesize cap they allowed for images, you'd
start to see short videos used in place of GIFs.[1]

However, in the animation case, video-encoding wouldn't even work--videos
don't have alpha-layers, after all. In this case, animated GIFs are currently
the _only_ solution--and APNGs would be a decided improvement.

\---

[1] This has only just become possible for video formats, though, so some
latency in implementing a policy change like this is to be expected. Until
recently "video on the web" meant Flash, and Flash content didn't have any of
the viral properties of images; you couldn't just right-click a Flash <embed>
to save the FLV from it, then upload it somewhere else and expect it to work.
We do have that now with HTML5 <video> elements, but they're still pretty
rare, and as long as there isn't a place to take the tiny-little-video-files
from, nobody will have them to re-upload them to anywhere else.

------
bloodorange
I wish they had picked a name that wouldn't be odd when mentioned at work.

~~~
eli
At the risk of sounding older than I am, I've noticed a lot of young
developers these days give things cutesy or even risque names.

(Edit: Also, it seems that name was selected by the author of the original CLI
program for APNGs, who does not appear to be involved in this kickstarter)

~~~
hackerboos
There was a javascript library called Testacular but they seen sense and
changed the name to Karma.

~~~
GhotiFish
When searching for Testacular help, you used the terms: Testacular
-testicular.

Now when searching for Karma help, you use the terms: Karma -Testacular
-testicular.

Fun world we live in.

------
Camillo
It's going to be great when users post APNGs with a first 1/30s frame that
shows Mickey Mouse's face and a second permanent frame that shows hardcore
porn. And your moderator uses a browser that doesn't support APNG, so they
just see the innocuous frame and have no idea about the rest.

Automatic fallback to a normal static PNG is a terrible idea. If you want an
animation format, give it its own extension and MIME type. The only reason why
it works for GIF is that it's basically assumed to be animated nowadays, and
it started out with animation support (as far as the web is concerned).

~~~
Dylan16807
You can already do things like that with gamma. To say nothing of embeds
allowing file substitution.

I don't see why fallback is bad. Having a single canonical file is so much
nicer than multiple files. APNG has been around for ages. If you as an upload-
accepting web dev aren't aware of it you're not a very good web dev. And as a
user you don't even know what container an image is using 99% of the time, so
MIME type doesn't matter. Browsers tend to ignore image MIME anyway because of
how common mislabelings are.

------
Grue3
Animated GIF is an abomination. I wish APNG would take over. All that's needed
is a tool that would convert APNG to GIF server side for browsers that don't
support APNG. Thus Firefox users will enjoy better image quality, and Chrome
users will have to either switch or enjoy the crapness of GIF image format
until Google implements APNG support too.

------
kunil
Yes, bring animated gifs back to the web again!

------
boksiora
i hope this project succeed

