Hacker News Reader

Comment by Enginerrrd | Hacker News Reader

At the data rates we had available in the 90's, size was performance over the internet.

I am absolutely incredulous that people choose to use a GIF over a proper video format to share video on places like Reddit in this day and age. I don't understand the motivation to do so.

View on HN

Well, these days imgur/gfycat will encode your gif as a video. Not sure I even see gifs much anymore.

Also, where have you been able to casually upload video to share quick bites like a cat making a funny face? You aren't going to upload a 12 second silent video to youtube. Up until very recently, gifs were the only permissible way to share this sort of content.

The huge advantage of gif was that it went in the <IMG> element. It behaves like a picture that moves, and can be uploaded to picture hosting services.

Video, until maybe the last 5 years, didn't.

It still doesn't. No loop control. Yeah you have HTML tags and whatnot, but the loop info must be inside the video itself, not as external metadata.

Github is still full of GIFs for exactly this reason.

Because gifs can't have volume. I don't want my phone to make noises when I'm browsing the web.

There is also still generally more broadly supported preview rendering of gif vs newer formats.

Also probably more addressable / available tools for anim gif creation.

Signal messenger doesn’t support webp across devices (last time I checked)....so I use jiffy format

Then your browser should have an option to mute-embedded-video-by-default. Problem solved.

Don't blame a web video format/standard for UI failures.

> Then your browser should have an option to mute-embedded-video-by-default. Problem solved.

I think you don't understand the modern web. If something is crappy the user shall have it. JS was always considered crappy but now is the best new thing. And you also missed tbe latest web/UI/UX development. From the web designer point of view the user is an idiot which must be punished for every attempt to customize something.

> Don't blame a web video format/standard for UI failures.

They are not UI failures. They are done on purpose.

Because it's a "gif" not a WebP. If you want a format to catch on, the language needs to roll off the tongue. Even though I hate the word "podcast" and it sounds apple specific even though it's not, it sound a lot better than WebP.

"Do I look like I know what a JPEG is? I just want a picture of a got-dang hot dog."

https://youtu.be/QEzhxP-pdos

Reply on news.ycombinator.com