Alternatively, ditch GIFs entirely and use bandwidth-friendly and feature-friendly HTML5 video.
gftcat baby!
A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
31–40 of 82 posts
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#32I kind of feel like .gif's as a format need to die, and this really demonstrates why, in my opinion. this page demonstrates a way to add stop/start abilities to a gif, as well as syncronized audio, which is literally what a video is but without all the ability for compression and support for more than 256 colors.
> which is literally what a video is People don't really want GIFs; what people want are filesize-limited, auto-playing-but-only-while-visible, auto-looping, and silent-by-default videos. Let's call these "animated images." The problem is thus: you're designing a piece of forum software, and you're considering whether to allow people to embed various elements in their posts. There's problems with allowing people to e…
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which is literally what a video is People don't really want GIFs; what people want are filesize-limited, auto-playing-but-only-while-visible, auto-looping, and silent-by-default videos. Let's call these "animated images." The problem is thus: you're designing a piece of forum software, and you're considering whether to allow people to embed various elements in their posts. There's problems with allowing people to e…
All of those criteria are satisfied by a element with the "muted" attribute set, plus a little bit of JS if you want to be able to pause the video when it's scrolled out of view or the user is looking at a different tab. I don't buy the argument about stealing bandwidth. A 50MB GIF is just as much of a bandwidth leech as a 50MB MP4.
Except that with a muted video, you need to communicate to your forum users that yes, they can upload a video, but it will be played back without sound. It's a different thing.
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which is literally what a video is People don't really want GIFs; what people want are filesize-limited, auto-playing-but-only-while-visible, auto-looping, and silent-by-default videos. Let's call these "animated images." The problem is thus: you're designing a piece of forum software, and you're considering whether to allow people to embed various elements in their posts. There's problems with allowing people to e…
All of those criteria are satisfied by a element with the "muted" attribute set, plus a little bit of JS if you want to be able to pause the video when it's scrolled out of view or the user is looking at a different tab. I don't buy the argument about stealing bandwidth. A 50MB GIF is just as much of a bandwidth leech as a 50MB MP4.
It's the image-hosting ecosystem. An animated image format needs to be accepted for upload by public image-hosts; it needs to keep its animated-image semantics when hotlinked and displayed "raw" by a browser; and it needs, needs to work when hotlink-embedded inside an element.
These are all things that are true of GIFs, and aren't true of any other video format. (And this doesn't even address the fact that many people use GIFs for the combination of animation and transparency, which doesn't currently offer.)
The image-hosting ecosystem also naturally deals with the bandwidth-drain issue: image-hosts don't want their bandwidth stolen either, so they have a cap on upload sizes. By allowing just embedding, you naturally lean on the image-hosting ecosystem's bandwidth economics to protect your users.
By allowing arbitrary embedding, though, you invite the nascent video-hosting ecosystem, which has achieved a different balance: far looser bandwidth limits, but far stricter caps on concurrent requests (e.g. the Dropbox-Public-folder model.)
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which is literally what a video is People don't really want GIFs; what people want are filesize-limited, auto-playing-but-only-while-visible, auto-looping, and silent-by-default videos. Let's call these "animated images." The problem is thus: you're designing a piece of forum software, and you're considering whether to allow people to embed various elements in their posts. There's problems with allowing people to e…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG
Everything that http://gfycat.com/about says about GIFs is also true of APNGs. For things that are actually video (i.e. not a pixel-precise hand-drawn three-frame 32-bit image loop), using a video codec is just better in every way.
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#36Alternatively, ditch GIFs entirely and use bandwidth-friendly and feature-friendly HTML5 video.
Give me an imgur of silent filesize limited html5 videos. No, youtube or vine don't cut it, I want to be able to give people a link to a raw file that they will automatically know to be small and silent.
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#37Alternatively, ditch GIFs entirely and use bandwidth-friendly and feature-friendly HTML5 video.
Give me an imgur of silent filesize limited html5 videos. No, youtube or vine don't cut it, I want to be able to give people a link to a raw file that they will automatically know to be small and silent.
http://gfycat.com/ has been gaining popularity on reddit lately. Links allow you to pick gif or html5 video.
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which is literally what a video is People don't really want GIFs; what people want are filesize-limited, auto-playing-but-only-while-visible, auto-looping, and silent-by-default videos. Let's call these "animated images." The problem is thus: you're designing a piece of forum software, and you're considering whether to allow people to embed various elements in their posts. There's problems with allowing people to e…
All of those criteria are satisfied by a element with the "muted" attribute set, plus a little bit of JS if you want to be able to pause the video when it's scrolled out of view or the user is looking at a different tab. I don't buy the argument about stealing bandwidth. A 50MB GIF is just as much of a bandwidth leech as a 50MB MP4.
There's one specific case which is close to impossible with 'video' formats: referring to animated images in CSS. This is quite important for certain sites where users can modify CSS but not HTML.
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#39This is incredibly cool. I'm definitely going to have some fun playing with this.
Re: A Polymer element for flexible GIF playback
#40Can anyone point me to a good desktop tool for creating Animated GIFs. I've used LICEcap but the "quality" isn't as good as other methods I've tried that involve more work.