Gif

Gif (originally GIF) (pronounced gif or jif)

(1) A set of standards and file format for storage of digital color images and short animations; technically, a bitmap image format for pictures with support for animations and up to 256 distinct colors per frame, including fully transparent color.

(2) A file or image stored in this format.

(3) To create a static or animated GIF from (an image or set of images) (the verb forms (used with object) being giffed, or giffing (sometimes, usually in a technical context, written as GIFFed of GIFFing).

1987: Originally an acronym (Graphic Interchange Format), a bitmap image specification created by CompuServe to provide a format for image files which easily could be transferred between devices using different hardware and operating systems.  GIFs can be animated and use a lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality.  Being a TLA (three letter acronym), the GIF didn't suffer the truncation of the True Image File Format which which became known as the TIF because the MS & PC-DOS operating systems used an 8.3 file naming system and TIFFs were thus named filename.tif.  Being uncontested and homophonic, TIFF and TIF happily co-existed and under operating systems not constrained by the 8.3 file system, they were often named filename.tiff.  Many GIFs are loops but some are constructed.

A Lindsay Lohan GIF.

This is an example of a GIF which looks like a loop but is constructed with closely connected images all from within a brief period of time and techs call these cinemagraphic (the name a deliberate point of differentiation from cinematographic) GIFs, a still shot-animation hybrid.   The viewer's experience is not one event in a loop but one event progressing continuously through time, the effect achieved by a focus on just the elements in motion while the rest remain static.  

The first dispute involving the gif was over the licensing of the LZW compression technique used.  Patented in 1985, the controversy lasted until 2004 when the final patent expired.  What endured was the debate over how to pronounce Gif; it’s either gif with a hard-G (of gift, got, and gate) or jif with the soft-G (of gin, gym, or gem).  The head of the CompuServe development team which invented the GIF has always insisted it should be jif but English evolves through use and those who see the word without knowledge of the programmer’s edict tend to use the hard-G because they wouldn’t pronounce “graphics” as jraphics.  Even the Obama White House intervened, indicating a preference for the hard-G and seems it's mostly only hard-core nerds, anxious to display reverence for the author, who adhere to the soft-G.

A Lindsay Lohan GIF.

This construct is built with a technique known as as Technical GIF, used typically to animate static content, such as PowerPoint slideshows, to render a moving image.  Unlike the visually similar morphing technique in which images merge to transform into something static, the technical GIF is a series of related images with sufficient similarity in aspect and size to create a animation with the visual integrity for the viewer to grasp the implication.

One could derive a “rule” (or at least a guide) from previous use which would be something like {G before the letters E, I or Y is realized as soft-G and elsewhere is hard-G}.  That supports the author’s dictate of jif but many exceptions exist, especially foreign borrowings like the Japanese geisha or the French margarine.  The authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was non-committal, noting both pronunciations and an uneasy state of peaceful co-existence has since prevailed.