GIF Image Types

The GIF or as it stands for Graphics Interchange Format is an indexed format. It is pronounced "giff" with a hard "G" sound. With being an indexed format that refers to it using a fixed list of colors as opposed to encoding every color separately. This is very good for images that have a small number of colors. An example would be your logo you might create for your niche site.

GIF can represent up to 256 colors (256 is 2 to the 8th power, so therefore, this is also referred to as 8-bit color. You may have heard of GIF also being called 8-bit color and that is why.

A typical photograph will have many more colors than 256 so saving a photograph in GIF will definitely result in a very poor quality.

Take home message: Do not use GIF file types for photographs. Only use it for logos or other types of icons.

GIF Format offers two useful features

• Transparency
• Animation

Transparency

With transparency you are able to create an icon with a clear background. If you display it on your niche site or on a button, whatever is behind the icon will show through.

Animation

GIF Animation will permit you to create an image that moves. Almost all web browsers will support animated GIF images. However, I actually do not think it is a good idea to create an animated image unless it is pertinent to the relevancy of the image. Do not do an animated image for your professional websites created here at WA just for the sake of being "cute" and Mr. Fancy Pants. Many users may find animated images to be really annoying and they can easily distract from the content and your content is KING. If you are trying to convert people to sign up for WA or trying to get your users to buy something and you are using a cutsy little animated image, you could be losing sales because of the distractions it can create.