Vista and .gifs

21-12-2007, 19:14

After messing about for last 20 mins trying to work out why Windows Photo Gallery in Vista won't see my .gif's, I discover M$ in their wisdom have decided to make Windows not see .gif's without using either IE or a 3rd party software app.
I have to create dozens of thumbnails gif's - having to preview them in Firefox isn't particularly painstaking, but why would they do this?
Makes no sense to me..

Dai · 21-12-2007, 20:45

Makes no sense to me either, but I do all that sort of stuff in Irfanview anyway. If you've not tried it..

http://www.irfanview.com/

21-12-2007, 21:07

Gif apparently contains a patented algorithm & you are supposed to buy a licence to use it in certain applications

http://www.cloanto.com/users/mcb/19950127giflzw.html

22-12-2007, 18:18

Ta for the links. I have used Irfanview before-it's probably a bit overkill for what I want though, which is simply a viewer-preferably one that opens as quickly as photo gallery does.

Quote:

Originally Posted by homealone

Gif apparently contains a patented algorithm & you are supposed to buy a licence to use it in certain applications

Yeah, I knew .gif's belonged to Compuserve, just surprised MS have had it removed. Presumably so's not to have to pay anyone.
They must hold a licence to use gifs though, as IE does just that.

Jon T · 22-12-2007, 18:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by kryogenik

Ta for the links. I have used Irfanview before-it's probably a bit overkill for what I want though, which is simply a viewer-preferably one that opens as quickly as photo gallery does.

Yeah, I knew .gif's belonged to Compuserve, just surprised MS have had it removed. Presumably so's not to have to pay anyone.
They must hold a licence to use gifs though, as IE does just that.

The patents for the GIF format ran out a couple of years ago, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF

Quote:

The US LZW patent expired on June 20, 2003. The counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expired on June 18, 2004, the Japanese counterpart patents expired on June 20, 2004 and the counterpart Canadian patent expired on July 7, 2004.[16] Consequently, while Unisys has further patents and patent applications relating to improvements to the LZW technique,[16] the GIF format may now be used freely.

22-12-2007, 18:52

I was presuming they 'must' own a licence rather than saying they must. Bad choice of words. It was homealone that said it was patented.
Again then, I can't see why MS have decided to remove it's usability in Windows.

Jon T · 22-12-2007, 19:21

doesn't make much sense does it. But then again, we are talking about Microsoft!

lsproc · 22-12-2007, 19:59

If you go to Default Programs, you can assign GIFs to Windows Photo Gallery.

22-12-2007, 20:03

Yes, but to what avail?
WPG in Vista does not support .gif's.

01-01-2008, 18:47

Just as an update - I have just noticed if you have a folder full of gifs and jpegs and scroll through them IN Windows Photo Gallery, it will happily display the gifs no problem as it used to do.
Assign the .gif extension to WPG and no go.
Try and open a .gif in WPG still no go.
So WPG does still have the capability to open gif's, just seems to have had the extension association bypassed somewhere.

27-03-2008, 13:16

Another update: SP1 has "Preview" in the right click menu which opens the gif in Photo Gallery.
I'm sure it wasn't there before.