In the headline of the Online Today article highlighted above you see a hint at how GIF was originally pronounced. It’s Pronounced With a Soft G The Webby Awards From there, animated GIFs proliferated almost instantly across the World Wide Web. In the upper right corner of the browser the little Netscape logo-seen above-would become animated, with shooting stars, whenever a web page was loading. Netscape Navigator 2.0, released in 1995, supported this feature and even showcased it right in the browser interface. They modified the GIF to create the loop effect wherein the slideshow repeated continuously. For that, we can thank developers at Netscape Communications Corporation, the company behind the ubiquitous 1990s web browser Netscape Navigator. Yet while that’s the technical birth of the animated GIF, it’s not what put animated GIFs on the map. The original format supported multiple images but the improved format supported delays which allowed for the slideshow effect. Shortly after the introduction of the GIF, Wilhite and his team improved on the GIF in 1989 by adding the ability to animate it like a simple and compact slideshow. Netscape Created Looping Animated GIFs Netscape Communications Corporation And in the October 1987 issue what do we find? An article about the exciting new GIF image format, a smiling Wilhite, and a still image of an airplane.Īlthough it’s impossible to crown that image the airtight undisputed first GIF of all time, the evidence here is solid enough that we’d be comfortable betting a sum of money on it. Online TodayĬourtesy of the Internet Archive, you can see copies of CompuServe’s Online Today magazine, published from 1987 to 1996. In fact, the first iteration of the GIF didn’t even support animation. In a 2012 interview with Daily Dot, Wilhelm said “I think the first GIF was a picture of a plane, it was a long time ago.”Ī lot of publications took that information and ran with it, declaring various animated GIFs of airplanes the very first GIF image. We did some deep digging though and we’re quite confident we dug up the first GIF file to show you. When it comes to something like hunting down the very first example of a given file format, however, things can get tricky because at the time it might not seem important to preserve such things for history. When it comes to public events like the launch of a product or the filing of a patent, it’s pretty easy to lock in on the very first example of the thing. The use of data compression made the GIF speedy, even compared to the uncompressed black and white images in use at the time. Wilhite and his team were tasked with creating a fast-loading color image file for Compuserve to display color images quickly for stock tickers and other interfaces. And the modem speeds were, compared to today, horse and buggy speed. If that sounds like ancient history, at least as far as computing goes, it certainly is. Users logged in to their respective services to check the news, stocks, exchange emails and messages with other users of their OSP, and otherwise engage in a sort of walled-garden version of the open internet we use now. These OSPs, the most popular of which were CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL, offered a connection to “online services” in an era before commercial access to the proper internet was available. Today we have Internet Service Providers (ISPs) but back then we had Online Service Providers (OSPs). From there, you can choose the translation you’d like, then start typing and send! (See the GIF below for visuals.The GIF was created in 1987 by a development team at CompuServe, led by Steve Wilhite. All you have to do is tap the Google icon in the keyboard, then choose the new translate option. Additionally, there are new backdrops (or themes) for your keyboard to help spruce up your daily tapping experience.įinally, Gboard now includes translation powers within itself. With new voice typing, Google says to expect a new interface that makes it easier than ever to get your message across by voice. In the GIF below, an example is a person typing out a response that includes “sushi” and seeing the sushi emoji there. Once you receive the update, you’ll start to see suggestions for emoji or GIFs in the prediction bar. From emoji and GIF suggestions, to improve voice typing, and Google Translate within, Google’s keyboard is turning into the little powerful input beast we always dreamed of owning. Gboard on Android is receiving an update this week that introduces a decent list of new features.
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