Chess.gif

Animated GIF generator for chess games

web

Chess.gif is a simple tool that converts PGN files into animated GIFs, allowing you to visualize and share chess games easily.

Purpose

One thing I often do after playing some chess games is sharing them as GIFs. Since there wasn't a good enough tool for me to do this, I decided to build one myself.

Features

  • Convert PGN files to animated GIFs
  • Adjust board, theme and piece styles
  • Download and share generated GIFs easily

Technology

  • Next.js
  • React
  • Tailwind CSS
  • FFmpeg

Challenge

The main challenge was to create a smooth and efficient conversion process that could handle large PGN files without losing quality. Everything is on client-side, so I had to optimize performance and memory usage. At first, I used react-chessboard for generating frames but it's extremely expensive. Then I switched to manually drawing chessboards using HTML canvas, which was much more efficient.

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Oct 12, 25, 15:46 GMT+6:30