Webmonkey GIF Tutorials

1996

An animated WebMonkey mascot pulled from a hobbyist GeoCities page, paying homage to Wired's how-to-build-a-website mascot. Place: Webmonkey, a division of Wired Digital, San Francisco Figures: Jeffrey Veen, founding editor · Taylor and Hodgman editorial team · uncredited freelance authors Webmonkey launches in 1996 as Wired Digital's how-to site for building things on the web. The GIF tutorials are among its most-trafficked content from day one. The topics: HOW TO OPTIMIZE PALETTES (down to 32 or 16 colors without obvious banding). DITHER VERSUS NO-DITHER (the Floyd-Steinberg pattern versus the flat-color look). TRANSPARENT BACKGROUNDS (the index-color trick with the fringing problem). BUILDING ANIMATIONS in GIFBuilder (Mac, free) or Animation Shop (Windows, bundled with Paint Shop Pro). These are the first reference tutorials for the format that anyone could find via Lycos or Alta Vista. Before Webmonkey, GIF-making knowledge was scattered across Usenet posts, README files inside shareware, and the cryptic help systems of the editors themselves. Webmonkey aggregates it into a stack of articles that a high-schooler with a 28.8k modem and an interest could read on a Sunday afternoon and emerge equipped to make a passable banner ad.