Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Every pricing page should have GIFs

tdinh.notion.site

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 228 posts

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#21

Post by mikepurvis »

aloisdg wrote: post #5

What about using video with control instead? Furthermore what about performance?

I think for many tech-savvy users, video = long-winded, annoying, work to scrub through for the good parts, etc. Whereas these brief animations are a helpful visual teaser of exactly what the feature is.

It's not unlike a modern Assassins Creed game, where the skill tree shows a little silent video of what the move you're about to unlock looks like in action. You feel more confident that you know exactly what you're getting for your doubloons.

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#22

Post by janekm »

franciscop wrote: post #15

Don't use GIFs, use audioless mp4s instead. They can be made to work in the exact same way as GIFs (autoplay, loop or not, etc) but are a fraction of the bandwidth.

Not for screen recordings, unless you're doing a screen recording of photos or videos a GIF will typically be more bandwidth efficient (as there will be large areas of single colours and few changes between frames which GIF is good at).

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#23

Post by janekm »

lol768 wrote: post #13
spcebar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that it autoplays and gives you a very quick rundown on the specifics of the feature/pricing. The way they're using gifs in the demo, it doesn't look like controls would make sense, but I think the message of this article is more about providing meaningful information about services and pricing than the gifs themselves.

Yeah, it's more of an implementation detail. But indeed, if I implemented this myself I wouldn't use GIFs. It's a joke of a format which produces bloated files, very limited colours (slightly less limited if you employ some creative hacks), no proper alpha support. We should put it in the bin and move on. Whether that's elements with no controls using something like AV1 (neat but no alpha AFAIK), APNG or VP9, I don't…

For a screen recording of a UI, it's the perfect format unless you're demoing a video/photo editing application. You don't need alpha or many colours and screen recordings are quite efficient in a GIF.

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#24

Post by janekm »

BasilPH wrote: post #20
fijiaarone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would performance with video be better than gifs?

Yes, video codecs are way better at generating smaller file sizes. GIFs are literally like flip-books of images. You can also autoplay videos without controls and loop them, but you have to mute them. Most "GIF" hosting websites actually use videos. Especially when it's "GIFs with sound".

That's actually not correct, GIFs can encode the differences between frames and quite efficiently for screen recordings. A GIF will be more efficient for a screen recording so long as there are small changes between frames.

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#25

Post by chrisseaton »

BasilPH wrote: post #20
fijiaarone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would performance with video be better than gifs?

Yes, video codecs are way better at generating smaller file sizes. GIFs are literally like flip-books of images. You can also autoplay videos without controls and loop them, but you have to mute them. Most "GIF" hosting websites actually use videos. Especially when it's "GIFs with sound".

> Most "GIF" hosting websites actually use images.

I think you’re mistaken - I think they mostly actually use videos these days and ‘GIF’ refers to short and small videos generally, not the specific file format.

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#27

Post by tantalor »

tambourine_man wrote: post #19

>It even works on mobile! Recently I've been having trouble pinpointing sarcasm on the web. That can't be real, can it? Mobile traffic has been larger than desktop for over a decade. We've been hammering mobile-first for almost that long. If that was a joke, sorry it passed right over my head. Also, GIFs… in 2021? We've had , , for what, 15 years?

I think the point of this comment was to distinguish the interaction on desktop (hover) versus mobile (click).

Desktop users are used to hovering on stuff to see what happens. You can't do that on mobile so you have to do something else (click) which is kind of counter-intuitive on mobile (clicks are supposed to navigate).

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#28

Post by devmor »

capybara_2020 wrote: post #17
franciscop wrote: post #15

Don't use GIFs, use audioless mp4s instead. They can be made to work in the exact same way as GIFs (autoplay, loop or not, etc) but are a fraction of the bandwidth.

Can they be used exactly like gifs? I have seen a few sites with mp4s but Firefox blocks them. I do not think even sites like Dribbble have figured it out. I have a lot of issues there with videos.

Firefox doesn't block any MP4s for me. Sounds like your addons, or a cross site security error.

Re: Every pricing page should have GIFs

#30

Post by jazzyjackson »

franciscop wrote: post #15

Don't use GIFs, use audioless mp4s instead. They can be made to work in the exact same way as GIFs (autoplay, loop or not, etc) but are a fraction of the bandwidth.

encoding an MP4 to work on all platforms is not as easy as exporting gif. gif will work on all platforms past and future, 10x the size tho they may be

(I encode as MP4 but i have to say it’s annoying to find it doesn’t work on some version of safari)

Post reply on HN