what gif

what gif? At its most basic level, a GIF is just an image file. You probably know animated GIFs. It stitches together a series of still GIF images to create a short silent looping graphic that usually looks like a video. The way it’s made, unlike videos, means it’s small and easy to share via text, email, social media, and more.

Opening GIF files on your Mac or Windows computer is easy. Search for the file name and double-click it when it appears. Then select compatible software such as Adobe Photoshop. Just click on your favorite program. GIFs have wide compatibility and can be opened by most major image and video editing programs.

GIFs can also be easily opened in web-based browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. For Internet Explorer, click the File menu and click Open. Select Browse and select All Files. Click the GIF filename and click Open.

There are currently two versions of GIF, 87a and 89a. The former is the original GIF format and the latter is the new GIF format. In this file format, block characteristics and pixel dimensions are referenced in fixed-length logical screen descriptors. The existence and size of the global color table can be specified by the screen descriptor and, if it exists, is further tracked. The tail is the last byte of the file and contains a single byte containing an ASCII semicolon.