68K versions of GIFConverter will run on the original Macintosh II, LC, and Quadra series. They will not run on Power Macintosh.
The BinHex format is a solution to a problem that plagues the transfer of applications, pictures and other binary data. If these transfers don't pass through 8-bit wide paths, some of the bits may be stripped off and the file gets corrupted.
BinHex gets around this problem by encoding the file into a text form. Note that BinHex files are larger than the original files, and they take longer to download. Although MacBinary files will work most of the time, if you have trouble after download, try using the BinHex version of a file.
BinHex files most often have a '.hqx' extension. You can decode these files with StuffIt Expander.
"Fat" versions of GIFConverter run on any Macintosh: 68K-based (original) Macs as well as Power Macintosh.
Macintosh files are rather unique in the world in that they come in several parts. There are two forks in the file, the resource fork and the data fork. The data fork corresponds to a normal file on most systems. But there's this extra resource fork part (which is really important since applications won't run without it) as well as special file information (so the Mac knows which application to run for a file, for instance). The MacBinary format combines all this information into a single file.
MacBinary files are smaller than BinHex files, but they are sensitive to corruption during download. They require an 8-bit wide path, and if they are sent through channels as if they were text, they can get damaged.
MacBinary files on this site have a '.bin' suffix. You can decode them by using StuffIt Expander.
PPC versions of GIFConverter run on Power Macintosh computers only.