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News & ArtsTuesday, July 3, 2012
Media / Visual Art / Teh Internets The New York Times Has an Animated GIF on Its Front Page Right Now
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 3:10 PM
This is the first time this has ever happened, right? The animated GIF has come a long way in the last few years—from primitive attention-getters on Geocities pages to lavish works of cinematic art. I wrote about how much I loved GIFs a couple years ago, and my affection for them has only increased with time.
This work on nytimes.com right now is part of a series of GIF portraits by Catherine Spangler to illustrate a piece about the Statue of Liberty by Alastair Macaulay. These are not GIFs of dogs falling into holes or crude Reddit animations. They're breezy moments featuring the Statue just standing there as the world moves around her—waves softly lapping, leaves rustling, a bird swooping by—and they're oddly more appropriate for the subject matter than a still photo. They're beautiful, and I hope to see more GIFs used like this in the future.
I remember back when I worked at Borders and the New York Times published their first-ever color photo on their front page. I sold a copy to a businesswoman who swore that this was the end of the Times. Color, apparently, was too unserious, and it meant the whole organization was heading for the toilet. I wonder what that lady thinks of this GIF.
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And no, I don't mean your kindlepad tabletto edition. I want an animated screen I can roll up and swat a fly with. Then I will know it truly is the future.
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when you visit the page, it behaves _exactly_ like a gif.
but i didn't check the source code to verify....so i guess that somehow "speaks volumes on how big an idiot" i am too. or something.
I'm sure it looks just like a GIF to you, but believe me, there are quite a few people using different browser/OS combinations who would be rather surprised at the notion that an embedded mp4 "behaves _exactly_ like a gif."
And then there's the folks who might want to save the file, open it up in an editor, and tinker with it... they'd run up against some differences right quick, too.
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So regardless of OS/browser combinations, does not 95% of the viewing population.see a simple image on loop?
Looked like that to me from Linux and Windows, IE and Chrome.
I'm going to go around tonight and talk about my favorite band that quite a few know about (5% of the population!). And if they've never heard of them, they are clearly idiots.
I was pointing out Akbar's weird hyperbole about an honest mistake that most people could have made.
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and don't worry, robotslave knows exactly what you are saying, but won't admit it, so as to keep well high up on that encrypted cyberhorse.
So you didn't try viewing the page on your smartphone?
And the second point I made, about downloading and altering the image, isn't a small one; a very big part of the reason animated GIF images continue to be popular is the ease with which they can be modified.
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