4 ms·

How strange. Until last month, I was running gifexplode.com, a site where you could share 'exploded' gifs - i.e. it took an animated gif and stepped over it fra

by user24 16y ago

How strange. Until last month, I was running gifexplode.com, a site where you could share 'exploded' gifs - i.e. it took an animated gif and stepped over it frame-by-frame. I took the service offline last month because people were using it to store porn. I had tried finding a client-side solution in vain. The long-term plan for gifexplode was to introduce a player just like this! Soon as I get a chance, I think I'll relaunch gifexplode with your viewer. Here's the blog post about how gifexplode was born, it's quite an interesting story: http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/gifexplode-community-powered-web-development/ http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/gifexplode-community-powe... edit: Hmm, using XHR to fetch the gif will give me cross-domain issues unless I first mirror the image on my server. Anyone know of a way around that?

boundlessdreamz 16y ago
Wouldn't you be able to create an image tag dynamically and then use that? I'm not sure if you can get a callback when the image is loaded though.
- user24 16y ago
  No; calling getImageData on an image tag with an external src will fail with a cross domain warning :( You can set up an onload handler on an image though, yeah.
crux_ 16y ago
Instead of mirroring, you could proxy. (Solves "storage"/"mirroring" issue; doesn't solve "nasty stuff served up through your server" issue.) In general, though, there's no way around it, except of course by restructuring gifexplode as a bookmarklet or convincing image host(s) to partner with you: They can then include the code on the pages they serve up themselves, allow XHR requests via HTML5 or flash mechanisms, or give you base64 data smuggled into a JSONP.
- user24 16y ago
  Thanks, yeah I think proxying is the best solution. I'm still not sure if that's a route I want to go down though... The nasty stuff served through my server is what I want to avoid. Gifexplode became quite popular on 4chan you see...
shachaf 16y ago
This was meant as a proof-of-concept and has several big inefficiencies that could be fixed pretty easily if someone was actually going to use it for something. The UI could also be improved, and I think at least IE9 could be reasonably easy to support (though I haven't tried). I was using XHR because an important constraint was to do everything client-side, and there's no other way that I could find to get the raw image data. If you have server-side support, though, a lot of things can be made much simpler. Is there a reason not to proxy, like crux_ suggested?
zcksjdn 16y ago
You may be interested in this, http://www.patrick-wied.at/static/nudejs/ http://www.patrick-wied.at/static/nudejs/. It might help prevent users from uploading porn. Found it through this HN post, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2401083 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2401083

by user24 16y ago

boundlessdreamz 16y ago

Wouldn't you be able to create an image tag dynamically and then use that? I'm not sure if you can get a callback when the image is loaded though.

user24 16y ago
No; calling getImageData on an image tag with an external src will fail with a cross domain warning :( You can set up an onload handler on an image though, yeah.

crux_ 16y ago

Instead of mirroring, you could proxy. (Solves "storage"/"mirroring" issue; doesn't solve "nasty stuff served up through your server" issue.) In general, though, there's no way around it, except of course by restructuring gifexplode as a bookmarklet or convincing image host(s) to partner with you: They can then include the code on the pages they serve up themselves, allow XHR requests via HTML5 or flash mechanisms, or give you base64 data smuggled into a JSONP.

user24 16y ago
Thanks, yeah I think proxying is the best solution. I'm still not sure if that's a route I want to go down though... The nasty stuff served through my server is what I want to avoid. Gifexplode became quite popular on 4chan you see...

shachaf 16y ago

This was meant as a proof-of-concept and has several big inefficiencies that could be fixed pretty easily if someone was actually going to use it for something. The UI could also be improved, and I think at least IE9 could be reasonably easy to support (though I haven't tried). I was using XHR because an important constraint was to do everything client-side, and there's no other way that I could find to get the raw image data. If you have server-side support, though, a lot of things can be made much simpler. Is there a reason not to proxy, like crux_ suggested?

zcksjdn 16y ago

You may be interested in this, http://www.patrick-wied.at/static/nudejs/ http://www.patrick-wied.at/static/nudejs/. It might help prevent users from uploading porn. Found it through this HN post, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2401083 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2401083