

Apngasm Wants To Promote Animated PNGs As An Alternative To GIFs - xmpir
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26/kickstarter-apngasm-wants-to-promote-animated-pngs-as-an-alternative-to-gifs/

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darkchasma
Scratching an itch that doesn't exist, with a name that makes it impossible to
have an intelligent conversation around.

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hnriot
* a name that makes it impossible to have an intelligent conversation around

why? Is the word orgasm so scary to you?

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te_platt
Thus proving the point.

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anologwintermut
another example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6277114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6277114)

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pornel
GIF video has "privileged" support in browsers, because it used to be the only
native video format, and that level of integration has been impossible with
'90s QuickTime/RealMedia/WMW plug-ins.

And decade of this situation has conditioned us to think that only shitty
video formats (like GIF, APNG, WebP with animation) can be allowed to have
first-class support in browsers, and any video format that is technically
competent must be kept isolated in special tags, must not work well with rest
of the browser and must cargo-cult limitations of plugins of the '90s.

But browsers can and do support H.264/WebM natively now. Technically (patents
aside) we could have <img src="video.mp4-or-webm"> work just as well as GIF
(and maybe even faster given 10th of bandwidth needed and possibility of HW
acceleration).

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sjwright
I'd like to promote _static_ PNGs as an alternative to animated GIFs. Who's
with me!?

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miloshadzic
[http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3968/tumbleweed004gi3.gif](http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3968/tumbleweed004gi3.gif)

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simias
Isn't it a bit late for that? I feel the modern alternative to gifs is simply
embedded video.

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noselasd
There's probably too many places where embedding a full blown video isn't
practical - at least not in existing products. Avatars, emoticons, simple GUI
elements (I'm thinking e.g. of a "copy file" dialog) and similar.

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simias
But isn't gif sufficient for that? apng is obviously technically superior, but
gif is already supported everywhere. It's one of those cases where "perfect is
the enemy of good" IMHO.

Don't forget that we now have javascript, CSS animations, canvas and webgl in
addition to good old gifs to deal with animated features. Do we really need
apng on top of that?

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chr1
With GIF one have to create multiple versions of the same image for different
backgrounds. APNG works nicely on any background.

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pcunite
Slightly related ... I'm only supporting IE8 and higher now for all new
website work. Wow! I just said that out loud! I feel ... better.

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tpainton
The name is juvenile.

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blorenz
The ruby interface is plain offensive
[https://github.com/apngasm/rapngasm](https://github.com/apngasm/rapngasm)

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blorenz
With a higher-end stretch goal of $20,000: Python native extensions, it is
apparent someone doesn't understand Python. On a humorous note, isn't _import
apngasm_ part of the batteries included?

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roc
animated gifs are used instead of video, because the restrictions lend it to
less cruft, fast(er) downloads and widespread browser support without plugins.

Building extensions/plugins to increase quality is not only missing the point,
it's directly opposed to it.

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jpkeisala
Let control to keyframes via JavaScript and it could be interesting.

