https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*rjIGH2VNUxDe...
And this one is 32MB:
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*a7_PF64-SfAd...
Total size of gifs in this page: 149MB.
Is Gfycat embedable? We should encourage its adoption.
That said, embedded videos will limit your browser compatibility unless there is a fallback. On the other hand, older browsers are also likely to have problems with 150MB webpages heavy on javascript.
But I didn't know that.
I started trying to read the article. All I saw were static images that didn't show the author's point at all, until some of them finished loading and started to flash and cause re-layouts.
Now the page is incredibly hard to read because all the images are on auto repeat.
This is a UI disaster, especially for a post about good UI. h264 works and would have shrunken the page dramatically. It gives me controls that let me play, stop, or rewind video. It can play partially loaded videos (which is hit and miss with GIFs depending on browsers).
At the very minimum you could use JS to stop the GIFs from playing when the user isn't mousing over (something I've noticed at Polygon). It keeps them from being insanely distracting.
It's a small text article with animated screenshots. It doesn't load well, it doesn't scroll well, it isn't easy to read. The only reason I stuck on the page was to see just how much time it took to fully load. If it wasn't for the fact I had decided to come here and point out how unusable it is I would have bounced off the page and never come back.
Here's the thing: animated GIF are not the solution. To almost anything. They're designed for small animations, not long high resolution screen captures or real video. If it's over ~150kb or so you should probably start rethinking your format choice. If it's 3 MB, you made a mistake. If it's in double digits like some of the versions before they were updated you've made a HUGE mistake.
Some people only get 200mb a month of data on their cell plans. This one page would use up 75% of that. For animated screenshots.
... but you couldn't embed that on Medium, anyway.
Doesn't seem like a win for anyone.
It's so annoying that a single tab can crash the whole browser, and it's also a security risk on Windows. The common "sandbox" model there is to spawn child processes with very limited user rights (like IE 8+, Chrome, Safari+Webkit2).
Given the number of tabs I have constantly open, I know that Chrome cannot handle it (I guess IE is the same here) and a multiprocess firefox won't either.
Firefox on the other hand, chokes much earlier than Chrome.
What I know is that I have more than 300 tabs in Firefox currently, both on my home machine and my work machine, and I don't have any problems with it.
Edit: And I would add that my task manager is also not polluted with hundreds of chrome processes.
That aside, what could possibly require opening 300 tabs? That must be an absolute productivity killer... Why not use a bookmark manager or "read later" service or something?
Sure, they should get pruned to bookmarks, but you can't argue if a person's method of staying in the "zone" works for them, I suppose.
Another thing i found those gif aren't being cached, as i refresh I am sure AWS will be happy with this business.
However, I bet all the lost traffic due to people leaving the page was probably worse than having to pay $900.