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On a side note I can't even imagine how big that webpage was. If you like animated gifs, boy have I got the page for you! All in all, what I've learnt is how m
by keyle 8y ago
On a side note I can't even imagine how big that webpage was. If you like animated gifs, boy have I got the page for you!
All in all, what I've learnt is how many petabytes must be involved in mapping the US and the world and the 3D aspects.
- Calib3r 8y ago89.9MB, 48.33s load time.
- NelsonMinar 8y agooh, so 1/5 the size of your average news website with a garbage video ad shoved in. And the video content is actually relevant!
- zbentley 8y agoTouché.
- RKearney 8y ago78.6MB. Every image is loaded on page load.
- saagarjha 8y agoI'm left wondering how much data would be saved if they were videos rather than GIFs. They'd probably end up being better quality, too!
- forgot-my-pw 8y agoMost of the GIF only has 2 frames, a video won't be better and smaller.
- gwern 8y agoThat's even worse. He took a simple side-by-side comparison of 2 or 3 images, and invested substantial effort into making it far more annoying and harder to compare by an uncontrollable permanent headache inducing slow flicker which is inferior to our built-in saccades. I hate the GIFs on his pages, they're by far the worst thing on his site and why I don't reshare his otherwise very interesting analyses, because they're a crime against the reader.
- yen223 8y agoHis use of gifs make differences much easier to see, vs putting them side by side.
- vatueil 8y agoIt works well for some of the comparisons, but for others I would really prefer static shots so I can take my time examining each. Especially the GIFs that compare more than two sources, such as the ones that include Here and Bing as well as Google and Apple maps, where waiting for the GIF to cycle through all four images is annoying. If the author is willing to implement it, those things some websites use that let the reader click the image or drag a sliding bar over it to compare might work better. Regardless, I do appreciate the author's insights.
- gwern 8y agoNo, it doesn't. When you saccade normally, you can do so in milliseconds (it's the fastest movement your body is capable of making and is literally subconscious) repeatedly and freely. The GIF yanks away control, forcing you to wait through the slow arbitrary preset cycle, while distracting you reading anything else. And that's in the good case of just 2 frames, when it's 3 or 4, it's much worse, because now you have to sit through the cycle possibly several times just to figure out what each frame is labeled and only then can you begin comparing! Imagine how much more pleasant and easy to read and accessible and less headache-inducing this article would be if it followed a systematic approach of presenting 1-4 images side by side, Apple then Google then misc.
- ndnxhs 8y agoI usually embed webm files with no sound and set them to auto play and repeat. Works really well.
- glhaynes 8y agoNot so well for Safari and IE users.
- Elidrake24 8y agoTrue, but the fallback protocol is pretty simple.
- ndnxhs 8y agoYou can set multiple video codexs sources in a video tag so safari and IE users can fall back to older technology.
- Macha 8y agoIt kills the browser on my old tablet, presumably from using too much memory (as the same browser version on my smartphone has no issue with it).