For those of you who love expressing your emotions online using animated GIFs, Google Chrome’s new update is bringing a new feature on the table. The Mountain View, California-based search giant has added animated PNG support to Chrome 59, the upcoming version of its popular web browser.
How does it make any difference given that we already have had animated GIFs for a long time, you ask?
Well, as much fun as they are, GIF files usually suffer from a few inherent issues such as huge images, as well as restrictions on bitrate, frames per second, and color, to name a few.
While writing a new format to replace the GIF is actually not that complicated, to enable said new format to work universally is as challenging as it can get. However, animated PNGs, or simply referred to as aPNGs, took a big leap forward in gathering universal acceptance. The credit for that goes to the new Chrome update.
According to online discussions within the developer community, as spotted by 9to5Google, the 59 version of Google Chrome enables full support for aPNGs. Note that aPNG is not exactly a new concept with a few extensions already having added the feature to Chrome. But having stated that, full native support is indeed a significant leap forward. Especially for web developers who can now be certain that the aPNG files on their webpages can be accessible to most users.
Worth noting, Chrome is not the first web browser to have introduced support for aPNGs. Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari have been already offering support for the format.
[Also check out: Apple Safari vs. Google Chrome comparison]