On Demand mode for Play Image Animation

[dude99]

Currently we have 3 modes (Loop, Once, & Never) for Play Image Animation. Unfortunately all 3 modes are useless to me most of the time, because either they are too chaotic (infinite looping ALL animation on webpage), unpractical (play all animation 1 time all at once on load), or Never-ever useful? (No animation at all, need reload with 1st or 2nd mode enabled).

I suggest, On-Demand mode:

1. Add a PLAY icon overlay on every animate image (centered or corner).

2. Optional function: either download full animated image onload, or just a preview thumbnail onload.

3. User click on PLAY icon to play animation once.

4. Optional function: Mouseover animate image to Autoplay animation of specific animate image.

5. Optional function: Mouse-out to PAUSE/STOP animation.

That's all. Thanks.

[Pesala]

Yes. Some room for improvement here. Play on mouseover seems the most practical to me.

[Nekomajin]

Click-to-play should be implemented like many extensions do. Animated images have an overlay or some kind of icon. Only the first frame is being shown, but when the user clicks on it, an infinite loop starts, as long as the user clicks on it again.

The current solution is only good to check it on the task list, but in practice, it's mostly useless.

[QuHno]

@nekomajin said in On Demand mode for Play Image Animation:

Click-to-play should be implemented like many extensions do.

Sadly most of those extensions fail if the gif is a link at the same time. Clicking on them usually leads to visiting the linked page - which is not what I would want most of the time.

Mouseover seems to be safer.

[Nekomajin]

@quhno
I am fine with mouseover. However, I guess it can be done with onclick using an icon instead of an overlay.

[luetage]

Check out "autoplay policy" in vivaldi://flags and set it to document user activation is required. The feature is coming in chrome. I have it set this way since a few months and it works rather well, videos and gifs start to play when you mouse over. There are enough sites out there which autoplay videos and this stops the nonsense right in its tracks.

[Nekomajin]

@luetage
I've just tried it, and it does not work for me.

[luetage]

@nekomajin Works for me on most sites, but it's experimental of course.

[QuHno]

chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy
is not for real GIFs, only for video and audio. Those "GIFs" it stops at e.g. imgur or twitter are no GIFs but "gifv" which is nothing but re-branded MP4 videos.
Animated GIFs have no autoplay attribute in the HTML code, so there is nothing to stop. To stop an animated GIF you basically need to replace it by something different .

Additionally it the flag has a life of its own and its own drawbacks. Read more about it at:
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes

"A feature policy allows developers to selectively enable and disable use of various browser features and APIs. Once an origin has received autoplay permission, it can delegate that permission to cross-origin iframes with a new feature policy for autoplay. Note that autoplay is allowed by default on same-origin iframes."

[dude99]

BUMP!

Hey V team, just take a look at that:
https://github.com/klombomb/gifsee.js
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRddYO6UbXc

[3o5]

It's quite silly that animated GIFs have become in recent years a popular alternative to short video files.
A GIF at 10MB instead of higher quality video at 1MB.

Now that browsers natively and universally support video formats, what's the point?
I'm guessing it's to make it harder to block auto-play.

[dude99]

Now we can made handling image animations less painful with some Chain Commands: https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/505594

But I still prefer these QOL requests implemented to improve everyone browsing experience.