GIFs support, ahoy!

This is a bit of a silly one... but in advance of NodeBB v1.19.2, I wanted to take a minute and announce that we'll be supporting animated GIFs in post uploads and user avatars!

Technically, this is not anything new. NodeBB did support animated GIFs via the ImageMagick plugin, but that has always been an extra plugin you needed to install, and also required the convert binary to be installed alongside your NodeBB installation.

Recently, we discovered that Sharp, the image processing library we use, now supported GIF output. While GIF output was supported beforehand, it did require a custom compilation of the libvips library, which we couldn't guarantee in NodeBB as it was installed by end users (or admins, rather). Now, we'll be able to support GIF output without any manual compilation steps.

Furthermore, it looks like the folks at Shopify sponsored the work, of which we are now benefiting. So kudos to you Shopify, for contributing back to open source!

How do I get support for GIFs in my NodeBB?

This updated version of Sharp with support for GIFs will be included with our upcoming v1.19.2 release. You can play with it now on the master branch, or by going to our community forum.

Will you update your avatar to be an animated GIF? Let us know in the comments below.