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Can we please stop with the 17MB GIF images used as demos? They use up lots of data immediately as you open the page, and are impractical, you don't know how lo

Can we please stop with the 17MB GIF images used as demos? They use up lots of data immediately as you open the page, and are impractical, you don't know how long the animation is, can't forward/rewind, and you can't press fullscreen on a mobile. And GitHub supports embedded videos in README.md files, videos are generally smaller than GIF files and their disabled autoplay is a feature = you save your data until you press play.

gildas 5y ago
Author here, sorry for the GIF file. I created it because people were not happy with the video hosted on Youtube. AFAIK, video files did not work when I did this demo. I'll try to improve this in the future.
- localhost 5y ago
  I wanted to comment on how useful that demo was to me. It did a great job at demonstrating why this is useful and how well it works compared to the native browser implementation. Thank you both for the demo and for the project!
  - gildas 5y ago
    Thanks :)
- tux1968 5y ago
  Would you mind sharing which tools you used to create that demo? It is really well done.
  - gildas 5y ago
    Sure! See here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30530438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30530438
- selcuka 5y ago
  Note that you can trim about 1/3 of that video by using an online GIF compressor such as https://www.freeconvert.com/gif-compressor https://www.freeconvert.com/gif-compressor (no affiliation).
gildas 5y ago
FYI, I updated the README page. Now, it includes a mp4 video weighting ~9MB.
foobarbecue 5y ago
GitHub only recently expanded video support from gif to decent video formats, and many github enterprise installs don't have those new features yet. So, keep spreading the word.
lostgame 5y ago
Giving a massive upvote for this, disappointed and confused to see you've been downvoted here. There's literally no reason to use GIFs like this, and - as you stated, it's massively disrespectful to those not fortunate enough to have broadband connections, but would like access to the information. Using data so wastefully like this always reeks of privilege to me - especially on something like GitHub. Wikipedia, for instance, never allows things like this.
- pizza234 5y ago
  > disappointed and confused to see you've been downvoted here Because it's a relatively new feature, and probably, a lot of devs don't know about it (I didn't). I did this [animated gif] once actually, before the feature was introduced, and I definitely hated it, but I had no choice. Thanks for bringing this to the general attention, though :)
- Zababa 5y ago
  Sharing a project with the world and taking time to document it reeks of privilege? I really can't understand your reasoning.
bob1029 5y ago
I think there is some nuance here. If the demo sequence is <5 seconds, I have never found myself becoming impatient. Gif is perfect for very brief demos. Anything longer than that and I'd like to have some idea where I am at in the video stream (and other controls as indicated)
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Just the "intro" splash takes more than 5 seconds, and it's totally unnecessary Yes, the gif bothered me too :D
  - gildas 5y ago
    It would seem that this subject is very subjective. However, I admit that I let myself go a bit on the intro and I can understand your point of view.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
> GitHub supports embedded videos in README.md files True since May 2021 so I think a lot of people are still finding this out... In my experience GIF is still the most set-it-and-forget-it way to know a video will play, to get cross-platform support out of mp4 you may have to provide two different codecs. Anyway, not disagreeing with you and most gifs could drop 90% of their size with better choice of resolution and framerate. This readme is particularly egregious doing a screen capture with scrolling. As for saving bandwidth until you want to play, I haven't tried this yet but it seems adequately clever to wrap a loading=lazy gif inside a details/summary tag: https://css-tricks.com/pause-gif-details-summary/ https://css-tricks.com/pause-gif-details-summary/
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Not to mention that H264 can take quite a bit of horsepower to decode and play as well (assuming your machine doesnt have a hardware chip specifically for doing just that)
  - tambourine_man 5y ago
    Which machine doesn't? Anything in the last 10 or so years will decode H264 with much less power than GIF because of it. Even a Pi supports it.
    - jjice 5y ago
      My 2014 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (gen 3) doesn't have hardware transcoding as far as I can tell made Zoom and Discord impossible to use for class, especially because there was no way (that I knew of) to disable all video except the presenter. Even playing a YouTube video on it makes it ramp up.
      - botdan 5y ago
        I'm not sure which CPU you have specifically but the lowest-end model of the X1 Carbon Gen3 has an i5-5200U [1] that lists Intel Quick Sync Video support. From the wiki page for Quick Sync [2]: > Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011 and has been found on the die of Intel CPUs ever since. I can't confirm but I'd guess your performance issues lie elsewhere than in the h264 decoding specifically. [1] - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/85212/intel-core-i55200u-processor-3m-cache-up-to-2-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/85212/i... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video
berkes 5y ago
> And GitHub supports embedded videos in README.md files Any documentation on this? Because I have tried to embed video in issues and PRs before, and did not manage. I'm hoping such documentation will explain how this extends to issues and PRs.
- TingPing 5y ago
  In issues its just drag-n-drop.
wackget 5y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/aaek23/how_to_stop_firefox_from_autoplaying_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/aaek23/how_to_stop...
- black3r 5y ago
  The issue is mainly with mobile browsers, as mobile data is expensive..., Firefox on iPhone doesn't have about:config.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
I wish browsers came standard, preconfigured with warning dialogs that triggered if assets attempting to load were beyond some threshold. That threshold could be decided by the browser vendors group based on some collection of network statistics and be adjusted on an annual basis or so.

gildas 5y ago

Author here, sorry for the GIF file. I created it because people were not happy with the video hosted on Youtube. AFAIK, video files did not work when I did this demo. I'll try to improve this in the future.

localhost 5y ago
I wanted to comment on how useful that demo was to me. It did a great job at demonstrating why this is useful and how well it works compared to the native browser implementation. Thank you both for the demo and for the project!
- gildas 5y ago
  Thanks :)
tux1968 5y ago
Would you mind sharing which tools you used to create that demo? It is really well done.
- gildas 5y ago
  Sure! See here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30530438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30530438
selcuka 5y ago
Note that you can trim about 1/3 of that video by using an online GIF compressor such as https://www.freeconvert.com/gif-compressor https://www.freeconvert.com/gif-compressor (no affiliation).

gildas 5y ago

FYI, I updated the README page. Now, it includes a mp4 video weighting ~9MB.

foobarbecue 5y ago

GitHub only recently expanded video support from gif to decent video formats, and many github enterprise installs don't have those new features yet. So, keep spreading the word.

lostgame 5y ago

Giving a massive upvote for this, disappointed and confused to see you've been downvoted here. There's literally no reason to use GIFs like this, and - as you stated, it's massively disrespectful to those not fortunate enough to have broadband connections, but would like access to the information. Using data so wastefully like this always reeks of privilege to me - especially on something like GitHub. Wikipedia, for instance, never allows things like this.

pizza234 5y ago
> disappointed and confused to see you've been downvoted here Because it's a relatively new feature, and probably, a lot of devs don't know about it (I didn't). I did this [animated gif] once actually, before the feature was introduced, and I definitely hated it, but I had no choice. Thanks for bringing this to the general attention, though :)
Zababa 5y ago
Sharing a project with the world and taking time to document it reeks of privilege? I really can't understand your reasoning.

bob1029 5y ago

I think there is some nuance here. If the demo sequence is <5 seconds, I have never found myself becoming impatient. Gif is perfect for very brief demos. Anything longer than that and I'd like to have some idea where I am at in the video stream (and other controls as indicated)

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Just the "intro" splash takes more than 5 seconds, and it's totally unnecessary Yes, the gif bothered me too :D
- gildas 5y ago
  It would seem that this subject is very subjective. However, I admit that I let myself go a bit on the intro and I can understand your point of view.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

> GitHub supports embedded videos in README.md files True since May 2021 so I think a lot of people are still finding this out... In my experience GIF is still the most set-it-and-forget-it way to know a video will play, to get cross-platform support out of mp4 you may have to provide two different codecs. Anyway, not disagreeing with you and most gifs could drop 90% of their size with better choice of resolution and framerate. This readme is particularly egregious doing a screen capture with scrolling. As for saving bandwidth until you want to play, I haven't tried this yet but it seems adequately clever to wrap a loading=lazy gif inside a details/summary tag: https://css-tricks.com/pause-gif-details-summary/ https://css-tricks.com/pause-gif-details-summary/

Melatonic 5y ago
Not to mention that H264 can take quite a bit of horsepower to decode and play as well (assuming your machine doesnt have a hardware chip specifically for doing just that)
- tambourine_man 5y ago
  Which machine doesn't? Anything in the last 10 or so years will decode H264 with much less power than GIF because of it. Even a Pi supports it.
  - jjice 5y ago
    My 2014 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (gen 3) doesn't have hardware transcoding as far as I can tell made Zoom and Discord impossible to use for class, especially because there was no way (that I knew of) to disable all video except the presenter. Even playing a YouTube video on it makes it ramp up.
    - botdan 5y ago
      I'm not sure which CPU you have specifically but the lowest-end model of the X1 Carbon Gen3 has an i5-5200U [1] that lists Intel Quick Sync Video support. From the wiki page for Quick Sync [2]: > Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011 and has been found on the die of Intel CPUs ever since. I can't confirm but I'd guess your performance issues lie elsewhere than in the h264 decoding specifically. [1] - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/85212/intel-core-i55200u-processor-3m-cache-up-to-2-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/85212/i... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

berkes 5y ago

> And GitHub supports embedded videos in README.md files Any documentation on this? Because I have tried to embed video in issues and PRs before, and did not manage. I'm hoping such documentation will explain how this extends to issues and PRs.

TingPing 5y ago
In issues its just drag-n-drop.

wackget 5y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/aaek23/how_to_stop_firefox_from_autoplaying_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/aaek23/how_to_stop...

black3r 5y ago
The issue is mainly with mobile browsers, as mobile data is expensive..., Firefox on iPhone doesn't have about:config.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

I wish browsers came standard, preconfigured with warning dialogs that triggered if assets attempting to load were beyond some threshold. That threshold could be decided by the browser vendors group based on some collection of network statistics and be adjusted on an annual basis or so.