How to Improve Your Site’s Performance When Using GIFs – Do you know how to improve your site’s performance when using GIFs? If not, then you are probably at the right place. GIFs are still in use because of their simplicity and amazing functionality. You can effectively improve your site’s performance by using GIFs in less time effortlessly. Here, we will discuss the ways to improve your site’s performance when using GIFs.
GIFs are one of the oldest formats that people are still using. It has been there for almost two decades now and little has been changed in its format. They are an amazing way to grab the most attention from the people and your target audience. As it will attract the attention of the people you will get improved site as the end results.
What are GIFs?
GIF is the small form or the abbreviation of the graphic interchange format. This is a bitmap image format which was developed by Steve Wilhite in 1987. These are in use since then because of the wide portability and support. The format supports up to 8 pixels for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. Not only this, but it also allows animation and a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame.
Advantages of using GIFs
GIFs are now widely used on various websites, social media platform and where not. Earlier they were not of much use. But now, you can see them almost everywhere, animated GIFs are used on a large scale on the internet. Below mentioned are some of the advantages of using GIFs.
- If you have a series of images then you can easily make them through GIFs as they are very simple to make.
- They do not require the web browser to have a plugin.
- One of the major advantages is that they have a lossless compression so that the images can be reduced without too much distortion.
- Animated GIFs are very small in use. Also, they are pretty easy to make.
- Another major advantage is that they are supported by every web browser.
Steps to increase site’s performance by using GIFs
Improper use of the GIFs can ruin your website’s performance and reputation eventually. They tend to make your site heavy and hard to load which makes the reason for low performance. Proper optimization and use of them are extremely necessary. Below mentioned are some of the tips to implement to improve your website’s performance by using GIFs.
Compression
Compression is one of the most effective and common methods to optimize the GIFs. However, there are many methods by which you can compress you GIFs files. Scroll down to check them out.
- Lossless is the method in which compression is done by keeping the data of the parent GIF intact. In other simple words, you can use the parent file whenever required. You can easily undo the changes you have made before. This is one of the safest methods to compress files.
- Lossy is the exact opposite of the lossless which also the name depicts already. It brings down the weight of the file. Through this method, you end up disintegrating the images that do nothing in terms of visual appeal.
Convert it into PNG
Out of the all the methods to optimize the GIFs files, converting them into PNG format is the easiest. You can do that without altering the quality of the image. Conversion can be done easily if you follow the right steps.
HTML5 videos
GIFs were never meant for video so eventually, they ended up making the website super heavy. These files are sure a pleasure to watch but they are quite heavy. You can compress them by converting it into the HTML5 videos. By this method, you can get a leverage of about 95%.
Conclusion
Aforementioned are the best ways you can implement to improve the quality of your website instantly. GIFs are very attractive and effective. So, do not forget to follow these tips in order to enhance the performance of your website by using GIFs.