> We should drop gif support.
We just need an actual replacement that has the same behaviours and actually works everywhere, as gif does. Videos are not a replacement, and other image formats don't work everywhere
We just need an actual replacement that has the same behaviours and actually works everywhere, as gif does. Videos are not a replacement, and other image formats don't work everywhere
Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Android, and iOS. That covers most of what we want, right? It fails on say... a 2009 era netbook or Android Gingerbread, but we gotta draw the line somewhere.
Even if you do care about Android Gingerbread: H264 3.0 Baseline profile IIRC worked on that (though its been a decade, so maybe I'm getting version numbers mixed up...). Going back to H.264 3.0 Baseline would reduce your compression-efficiency (more distortion / noise at same filesize, or larger filesize for same levels of distortion), but greatly improve your compatibility with decade-old devices if you cared.
Even H.264 3.0 Baseline is a far superior format compared to GIF though.
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Lol audio is a mess though. But video-only is actually way better than most people expect.
edit: grammar
The web browsers seems to have significantly improved compatibility of <video> in recent years, and even had decent compatibility 10 years ago (if you use Baseline profile H.264 3.0 videos and Javascript to smooth over some edges).
You say they had decent compatibility 10 years ago, but no. At least a couple years ago you still needed many fallbacks and it was a hassle to guarantee the video would show properly. Not to say that you wouldn't be able to share it as image to tumblr/pinterest for example.
That has always Just Worked with GIFs, but the last time I checked (a couple of years ago) it basically never worked with any “proper” video format.
I'm sure there's some javascript / backend logic that handles some corner cases. But... yeah. A lot of self-looping .mp4 stuff seems to be solved. The <video> tag has been getting more and more consistent these days.
I just do some hobby stuff though. I only test on the stuff close to me (chrome, edge, firefox, my phone). So I can't say too much about reliability on older / more obscure platforms.
But yes: its weird that Chrome / Firefox don't have easy-to-use "save as" buttons on .mp4s. But just grab the .mp4 and share the .mp4 on whatever services you use.
Increasingly, it seems like .mp4 is becoming the new gif. Its not quite as user friendly yet, but there's all sorts of advantages compared to .gif.
Right, so this just don't work for like 90% of the population, or when you are on mobile, right?
Edit: what I mentioned about saving the mp4 and having problem later is: if I save the video and then try to re-share it on Twitter, it will be shared as a video, and not as a gif - or at least that was the case last time I tried
If you are posting a gif on a comments section of a website, or uploading to tumblr, for example, you don't have this control
WebP support (including animation) was added to the most recent major version of Safari, meaning WebP has similarly widespread support.
Webp worked well though, resulting in a 300kb webp. Might try to start using it
edit: nevermind, webp doesn't work on whatsapp.
That’s part graceful and part a security hole. It means you can hide any image you want if moderation tools don’t show past the first frame.