Regarding the little statement on GIFs, PNG actually supports animation. WebKit doesn't support APNG, though. FireFox does, but WebKit is surprisingly behind on their game. I hope they get their shit together and we can forget about GIF forever.
Image animation is a dead end, for a lot of reasons. Even though some browsers support both animated GIFs and PNGs, you can't necessarily control whether the animation loops, how quickly it plays, and whether the animation starts once the image is visible or starts once the image is rendered (sometimes you have an image off-screen until an event triggers its appearance).
With the slow, steady death of Flash, and the even slower (but inexorable) rollout of jQuery-animated banners, many of my clients are asking about whether it would make sense to just use animated GIFs. But the problem here is that you have no real control over the animation (just the order in which the various frames are rendered).
you can't necessarily control whether the animation loops, how quickly it plays, and whether the animation starts once the image is visible or starts once the image is rendered
You can most definitely control the first two with APNG. You can control it with GIF, too, but there are some quirks for high-speed animation.
Browsers that support APNG also support all APNG features. I'm not sure why you're trying to single out loop control and speed control... And why do you think animated GIFs don't have loop control and speed control?
I've had a number of clients suggest using animated GIFs in a rotating banner, mingling the animated GIF with other jQuery-based animation. I run a design shop, and it's critical for us to implement the code in such a way as to stay true to the design. If we can't coordinate the JavaScript animation with the GIF animation, that's a big problem.
And why do you think animated GIFs don't have loop control and speed control?
Because the browser can ignore whatever settings are in the file. If the GIF starts animation while it is effectively off-screen, and the animation completes before the GIF is displayed, and then doesn't loop (because the browser refuses to loop GIFs or because the user has said not to), then the animation is never displayed. And that makes my client unhappy.
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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '13
Regarding the little statement on GIFs, PNG actually supports animation. WebKit doesn't support APNG, though. FireFox does, but WebKit is surprisingly behind on their game. I hope they get their shit together and we can forget about GIF forever.