Today the GIF turns 30 - but what it is, how do you pronounce it and where are the best ones? We explain all (2024)

THE GIF turned 30 today, so, let's wish the Graphical Interchange Format a very happy birthday.

From its humble beginnings on black and white computers to its now ubiquitous usage in memes, we have the lowdown on one of the most important file formats in history.

What is a GIF?

A GIF, or Graphical Interchange Format, is a bitmap image format that was invented on June 15 1987 by a US software writer called Steve Wilhite for CompuServe.

Gifs are highly compressed images that typically allow up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, which in total allow up to 256 colours across the image.

For comparison, a JPEG image can display up to 16 million colours and pretty much reaches the limits of the human eye.

Back when the internet was new, gifs were used extensively because they didn't require much bandwidth.
Check out the original Space Jam website from 1996, pictured above - it still works!

How do you pronounce GIF?

This is probably one of the most important questions that you could ever have asked Jeeves.

Without any further adieu, the creators of the gif pronounced the word as "jif", with a soft g like that in "gin".

According to Steve Wilhite, he intended it to sound like the American brand of peanut butter, Jif.

If only it was that simple - the pronunciation with a hard G as in "gift" is listed by the Cambridge Dictionary of American English as the correct pronunciation, whilst the Oxford English Dictionary lists both pronunciations as correct.

Saying gif with a hard g is also widely used across the English speaking world and it would seem that people pronounce it based on personal preference.

This eternal disagreement has lead to heated debates across the Internet and it doesn't seem like an argument that will ever go away.

What are animated GIFs?

A single gif file can feature multiple frames which are displayed in succession in order to create an animated clip, these can either be looped endlessly or just stop at the end of the sequence.

We tend to use animated gifs today as "Reaction Gifs", they act as fun replies for conversations on apps like Facebook Messenger.

Animated gifs are one of the most common image formats on the Internet and now you can find the perfect gif for any topic using websites like Giphy.

So instead of replying to your ex with a sad face emoji, or words like a regular human being, you can just send them a gif of Zooey Deschanel instead.

But they can also be used to create amazing pieces of art in the form of the Cinemagraph, coined and created by husband and wife duo Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.

Across a static image they create individual instances of motion which ultimately creates moments of eloquence and peacefulness, turning the humble gif into something that could be profound or meaningful.

What about memes?

The main difference between an animated gif and a meme is that memes tend to be static images that make a topical or pop culture reference and animated gifs are, more simply, moving images.

You can find all the animated gif memes that your heart desires at website such as Giphy and Awesome Gifs.

As with most things, gifs and memes work better together. Grab an animated gif and stick some topical words on it et voilà, you have an animated meme.

How did Facebook celebrate the GIF's birthday?

To mark the GIF turning 30, Facebook has added new GIF related services to the social media platform.

Users could already post GIFs in status updates, but from today they can also use them in comment threads.

Happy birthday GIF.