GIF89a and the Frame Loop

JUL 31 1990 · 12:00

The canonical rotating Earth, the looping behavior that GIF89a's frame delay and graphic control blocks made possible. Place: CompuServe, Columbus, Ohio Figures: Steve Wilhite · CompuServe graphics team The 1989 revision adds application extension blocks: arbitrary metadata containers inside the file. One of them, the Netscape Navigator 2.0 application extension (added to common implementations in 1996), specifies a loop count. Combined with the format's existing ability to store multiple image frames and a per-frame delay, this turns the GIF from a still-image format into an animation container that any modern browser will autoplay. It is, in retrospect, a quiet revolution. The Web of 1996 has video as a download-and-launch-a-player affair. The GIF gives the page itself the ability to move. Video: Tumblr's David Karp hands Wilhite the lifetime achievement Webby. Wilhite's five-word speech is itself a GIF.