What are the different usecases of PNG vs. GIF vs. JPEG vs. SVG?

Question

When should certain image file types be used when building websites or interfaces, etc?

What are their points of strength and weakness?

I know that PNG &

Answer 1

There is a hack that can be done to use GIF images to show true color. One can prepare a GIF animation with 256 color paletted frames with 0 frame delay and set the animation to be shown only once. So, all frames could be shown at the same time. At the end, a true colored GIF image is rendered.

Many software is capable of preparing such GIF images. However, the output file size is larger than a PNG file. It must be used if it is really necessary.

Edit: As @mwfarnley mentioned, there might be hiccups. Still, there are still possible workarounds. One may see a working example here. The final rendered image looks like that:

full-color-gif-image