The advantages and limitations of animated GIFs

introduction: A animated GIF is a file format and a method of creating basic animation for use on webpages, there are various downsides and advantages to the use of animated gifs. GIF stands for graphics interchange format this is the format that the animation is saved as. i am now going to go into more detail about gifs and go through the various advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: using gifs is a good way to make a website appear much more appealing, this is of course providing that the gif is high quality and not pixelated, using GIFs to make a website more interesting can lead to overusing them this is not good as it created too many images and can become obnoxious and distracting to the user.

GIFs support transparent background so instead of using a plain background you could use a transparent background making your website more unique and interesting as well as having it combine very well with any GIFs you have on your site.

GIFs are very appealing to a young audience so having a few GIFs would help attract new users of a younger age this would be useful on kids videogame websites.

GIFs have a relatively small file size, this is a big advantage as it allows them to be put on websites rather easily and hassle free.

Disadvantages: the max colour pallet of gifs is 256 colours this is a big downfall if you are trying to create a very specific animation with very specific colour shades.

The users internet connection will have a big impact on the viewing of the GIFs , they do not usually take too much bandwidth to view and there is rarely problems, but for users on a dial up connection or a low broadband connection they would be hard to view and would be very blocky and would not be seen to the full effect.

GIFs will only animate in browsers that support GIF animation so that will cause certain users using obscure browsers or with changed browser setting to be unable to see the animation.

Once the gifs has been animated it does not become possible to go back and edit the GIF.

In order to upload a GIF to a webpage it must be a fairly small file size this means you are very limited to the animation possible and it can be a chore to keep the file size down.

There is no form of interactivity possible with GIFs giving it a disadvantage over other types of animation that allow user interactivity.

GIFs have a bad reputation for being used on pop up ads this is because they are easy to create and usually draw the user in.

Sound cannot be used with animated GIFs meaning you may be best with other forms of animation to get your point of animation objective across to the user more efficiently.