GIFsmos

GIFsmos is a web app for creating animated GIFs from Desmos graphs.

Using GIFsmos

Creating, importing and saving graphs

Start by making something dynamic and awesome in the Desmos graphing calculator! You can do that right inside of GIFsmos, or you can import one of your saved graphs from desmos.com by pasting its URL into the expressions list in GIFsmos, and it will be automatically imported for you.

Conversely, if you build something great in GIFsmos that you want to save to your Desmos account, click "edit graph on Desmos" (at the bottom of the expressions list or the graph paper), and it will open a copy of your graph on desmos.com.

To learn more about using the graphing calculator to build cool stuff, check out the Learn Desmos resources.

Capturing snapshots

GIFsmos generates your animated GIF from a list of snapshots taken from the graph paper. You can add a single frame to the list by clicking the camera button.

GIFsmos also has a multi-capture mode that lets you generate multiple snapshots from a slider in the graphing calculator. Open the multi-capture panel and enter the relevant information in the input fields:

Option	Description
Slider Index	the index of the expression that contains the slider values you want to capture
Slider Min	the first slider value to capture
Slider Max	the last slider value to capture
Slider Step	how much to increment the slider in between captures

Finally, click the "Capture" button, and GIFsmos will automatically capture one snapshot for each slider value defined by the min, max, and step.

Previewing

Click the preview button to open the preview panel. You can preview your future GIF either by scrubbing through the snapshots with the slider, or by clicking the play/pause button on the preview image. The animation will run at (roughly) a speed determined by the "Interval" option in the settings panel, so it will give you a good idea what the final GIF will look like.

Adjusting image settings

Click the settings button to open the settings panel. There you can set the desired image dimensions (applies to both the captured snapshots and the final GIF), as well as the interval between frames in the generated GIF.

If the "Oversample" option is checked, images will be captured at double the nominal dimensions and at a higher pixel density, which is nice for high-density displays. For instance, an oversampled 300x300 image will actually result in a 600x600 image that looks good on high-density displays when rendered at 300x300.

Generating and downloading a GIF

Inside the preview panel, once you're happy with the results, click the "Generate GIF" button to create your final image. When the image processing has completed, a download button will appear in the sidebar. Click it to save your GIF (named gifsmos.gif) to your browser's default download location.

Developer quick-start

1. Install Node.
2. Clone the repo.
3. cd into the project root.
4. Run npm install to install project dependencies.
5. Run npm start to start the development server on http://localhost:3000/.

To run the test suite:

npm test

To build a static version of the app:

npm run build

Image credits

The sidebar icons in GIFsmos are from the "World Wide Web" collection created by Dara Ullrich. It can be found here on The Noun Project.