The pin-board style photo-sharing website Pinterest now supports animated GIFs.
GIF or graphics interchange format are image files that are compressed to shorten upload or download time. It has the capability to reduce the size of any image without degrading its visual quality. It is a popular format on the Web because it hastens file sharing.
On Thursday, Pinterest has finally launched its support for these GIF images. There are already 10 million of them all over the website that users can choose from.
"The well-timed GIF may be the greatest thing to have happened to the internet since emoticons, and lots of people have said they'd love to see playable GIFs on Pinterest," the company stated in its blog post. "Starting today, we support GIFs in all their animated glory!"
With the latest development on Pinterest, these GIF images, when pinned will become animated GIFs.
TechCrunch described how the GIFs work for the site. When a user pin an animated GIF photo to Pinterest, a "play" and "pause" button will surface in the lower left portion of the pinned item. The buttons will allow users to play and see the animation without the need of going back to the site where it's originally from.
However, that doesn't mean that users can make their pinned images move whenever they want to or not - rather, the button can only be seen on the animated GIFs found in Pinterest's main feed, by category searches, and search results pages.
Also, users cannot play it on their mobile phones yet.
"For starters, you'll be able to play your GIFs on the web, but we'll be sure to bring them to your mobile soon," it said in its blog post.
Pinterest is a photo-sharing site that lets you create a collection of things you like or need like cooking recipes, make-up tutorials and party ideas.
