Application Name	apng2gif and webp2gif
Version	1.0
Short Description	Batch-convert animated PNG and WebP images to GIF
Supported OSes	Windows
Web Page	a bit more about the software
Download Link	apng2gif.exe and webp2gif.exe
System Requirements	Nothing special, just Windows 2000 and later
Version History	1.0 for apng2gif and webp2gif. (The other 4 conversion tools -apng2webp, gif2webp, gif2apng and webp2apng - were available since summer.)
Author	https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=27425

Description
Check out these 3 animated pictures (actually 2, because I cannot upload a .webp as an image apparently - despite the png extension, it is a WebP).



I bet you can't. That's because the companies behind the 3 most widely used internet browsers are unable to reach a consensus about what file format should web designers use for simple animations. There is GIF, but that is limited to 256 colors, the compression is not stellar and it does not support full alpha. Then there is animated PNG introduced in Firefox years ago. Adopted by Opera, but who cares now, right? Chrome did not want to lag behind, but for reasons unknown to me and apparently many others, instead of adopting animated PNG, they created their own format WebP. Firefox (of course) refused to adopt WebP. Internet Explorer (as always) plays dead and does not care about innovation, so neither animated PNG nor WebP is supported.

So, here we are. If you want to have a small animation with more than 256 colors or full transparency channel on your web page, you are in trouble. You can either give up on the quality side and just use GIF. Or, if you absolutely want the best quality, you can prepare 3 separate files and pick the right one on the web server depending on the web browser used by the visitor (you can also do it on the client side with javascript, but eeek).

Here, webp2gif and apng2gif come to help you. If you decide to use for example WebP as the primary format for your graphic assets, you can use webp2gif to quickly generate GIF alternatives for all WebPs.

The tool(s) can scan all files in a folder and convert them. There are ways to skip already converted files so you can re-run the same command after you have made changes to your animations and it will convert just the changed/added files. It can also skip all non-animated images.

Either command line switches or hacky renaming tricks can be used to adjust the behavior of the tool. More info on the home page (or just ask in this thread).

Features
Converts animated images in PNG or WebP format to GIFs for those conservative Internet Explorer visitors to your website/blog.

Planned Features
Open to suggestions.

Screenshots
Command line tool, so nothing to see here.

Usage
Installation
Not needed.

Using the Application
You can either use it from a command line or you can drag and drop files or folders on it.

Uninstallation
Delete it.

Tips
Rename it, put it on the desktop and drag and drop folders with animations on it.

Known Issues
All issues are still unknown.

Hi all,

The web-designers among you already know that using an animated asset in your web page design is a pain. We have GIF (supported by all browsers, but limited to 256 colors and 1bit transparency), animated PNG (supported by Firefox) and animated WebP (supported by Chrome).

If you actually want to have an animation with semi-transparency (smooth edges, something appearing or smoothly changing from one thing to another thing, ...) on your web page, you have a big problem. You have to serve different files to each browser.

Earlier this year, I made some command line tools for batch-converting gifs to animated pngs and webps and now I am thinking the opposite direction may actually be more useful. The scenario I am imagining is this:
* you create your animations in WebP or animated PNG using full colors and smooth transparency
* you run a command that coverts all WebP or PNG files to GIFs and places them into the same folders <- that would be the NANY
* you use browser-specific CSS hacks (or PHP) to serve the right files for the user's browser
* profit (max. quality of your design for as many people as possible)

So, what do you think, is it worth doing? Would you use it?

And which definition for "silent" does this scandal fall under?  Even the tl;dr's need a tl;dr summary.

-mwb1100 (September 02, 2014, 02:13 PM)

Since I picked the title, I should explain...

I am not really that much interested in the two people in the center of the thing. What annoys me is the reaction of the game review webs, their lack of self-reflection, the attempt to sweep it under the rug, the damage control they are desperately trying to do. From this point of view, it is silent. Look for example at this article from yesterday ( http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/02/hundreds-of-developers-are-fed-up-with-the-hate ), it is full of very biased info, blames none others than the gamers for the whole thing and earlier today, it had comments blocked.