Last modified: 2014-05-23 01:27:55 UTC

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Bug 53167 - For users whose browser doesn't support APNG files, show them an animated GIF of the file instead
For users whose browser doesn't support APNG files, show them an animated GIF...
Status: NEW
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
File management (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Lowest enhancement with 1 vote (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks: multimedia
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2013-08-21 19:19 UTC by James Forrester
Modified: 2014-05-23 01:27 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description James Forrester 2013-08-21 19:19:25 UTC
Lots of users (essentially, anyone who uses a browser other than Firefox) have browsers that don't support APNG files. Instead, their browser will interpret it as a regular PNG file and just show the first frame.

A nicer failure mode would be to give everyone a GIF file instead, and then at runtime use some client-side JS to sniff for the feature and if present replace the GIF with the APNG instead.
Comment 1 Bawolff (Brian Wolff) 2013-08-21 19:27:14 UTC
For reference, example apng file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Animated_PNG_example_bouncing_beach_ball.png

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Would probably require new software deployed to server (I don't think image magick supports apng->gif, but not sure). Googling suggests http://apng2gif.sourceforge.net/
Comment 2 Brion Vibber 2013-09-03 19:10:30 UTC
Note the general problem with APNG->GIF is that you may have to apply two lossy transformations:

* color quantization to an 8-bit palette, probably with dithering
* 8 or 16-bit alpha channel -> 1-bit alpha channel

Both of these will potentially leave a GIF version looking like crap, and most people will get the crappy version. :(


I'd kinda prefer to phase out animated GIF in favor of proper video formats, editable slideshows of static images, or animated SVG... introducing APNG basically just gives us a slightly better animated GIF exclusively for Firefox users.
Comment 3 Bawolff (Brian Wolff) 2014-05-23 00:29:32 UTC
lowering priority in light of comment 2. Possible wontfix
Comment 4 James Forrester 2014-05-23 01:27:55 UTC
(In reply to Brion Vibber from comment #2)
> I'd kinda prefer to phase out animated GIF in favor of proper video formats,
> editable slideshows of static images, or animated SVG...

That's a nice theory, but it's highly unlikely to actually happen given the low uptake in the toolchain; APNG isn't widely used either, but ASVG is almost unknown IME.


> introducing APNG basically just gives us a slightly better animated
> GIF exclusively for Firefox users.

Firefox users and those who care about these things and so have browser plugins/etc. :-) But yeah.

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