Google is set to mark a big change that could mark the end of GIFs. Chrome has confirmed to bring support for APNGs in version 59 that can be seen as a better version of GIFs.
Animated Portable Network Graphics or APNGs have an advantage over GIFs. It behaves in the same way but supports both 24-bit colors, and 8-bit transparency. So, it is much better than GIFs.
APNGs are not news and Firefox already supports this for quite some time. On Google Chrome, there are few extensions to add the support for APNGs, but native support is not yet available.
So, users will no longer need to install any browser extension to enjoy APNGs in Chrome after the version 59. It is currently in the Dev channel.
You should also know that requests to add the support for APNGs was first marked back in 2008 and Google took around 9 years to bring the support. If you want to know why Google took so long to adopt APNG, you can read this conversation.
APNG support in Firefox is not news but it became mainstream when Apple adopted it for iOS 10 iMessage apps. With Chrome version 59, APNGs will become mainstream and we will start seeing it everywhere in place of GIFs.
GIFs have always been inefficient because of color restrictions, slow frame rates, and large size. APNGs will solve these issues without affecting the way we share animated graphics on social media. So the adoption of APNGs will surely mark the end of GIFs.
