Apple has created a new Javascript API so developers can bring Live Photos to the web. Live Photos are Apple’s way to bring your photos to life. A live photo is a cross between a video and a GIF, but on-demand animation for live photos was limited to iOS and Instagram’s Boomerang feature…until now.
Live Photos on the Web
Last year, Tumblr provided a workaround to let users bring Live Photos on its platform. This may have prompted Apple to create an official code version. Called LivePhotosKit JavaScript API, developers can find it on the NPM website, where they can also see code samples.
Apple also provides examples to show developers how to set it up. According to the documentation:
This new JavaScript-based API makes it easy to embed Live Photos on your websites. In addition to enabling Live Photos on iOS and macOS, you can now let users display their Live Photos on the web…The JavaScript API presents the player in the form of a DOM element, much like an image or video tag, which can be configured with photo and video resources and other options, and have its playback controlled either programmatically by the consuming developer, or via pre-provided controls by the browsing end-user.
In the near future, end users could finally see official Live Photo integration on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks. Additionally, photographers could create a Live Photo gallery on their websites.