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Safari in iOS 10 Offers Improved Animated GIF Viewing and Stops Noisy Autoplay Videos
In iOS 10, Apple plans to make some changes to the way videos are handled, putting a stop to irritating autoplay videos and offering improvements to animated GIFs. The changes will come in the form of updated policies for "video" elements, as outlined today by Apple software engineer Jer Noble on the Webkit blog
As iOS 8 and iOS 9 users know, an animated GIF encoded using "video" tags requires users to tap on the GIF to play it as a video would play, creating a frustrating user experience. When viewing such a GIF, it's currently necessary to load the image, tap it to play, and wait for it to be displayed full screen. In iOS 10, the user experience is being simplified.
Going forward, Webkit will allow videos with no audio element or a muted audio element to honor autoplay attributes, so GIFs and videos in this format will no longer require a tap to play automatically. Videos that use the "video playsinline" element will also be able to play inline without the need to enter fullscreen mode.
At the same time, videos that do have an audio element will be automatically paused and will require a user gesture to play, cutting down on irritating advertisements and other spam-type videos. Autoplay video elements will play only when on screen and will pause whenever they are not visible, which will help to preserve battery life.
Starting in iOS 10, WebKit relaxes its inline and autoplay policies to make these presentations possible, but still keeps in mind sites' bandwidth and users' batteries. [...]GIFs that use the video element have smaller file sizes and thus use less bandwidth and less energy, making them an appealing alternative to the GIF format. Displaying GIFs this way is growing in popularity, and iOS users will no longer have a subpar viewing GIF experience on popular sites like Imgur. The full Webkit video policies and use case examples are available through the Webkit blog post.
We believe that these new policies really make video a much more useful tool for designing modern, compelling websites without taxing users bandwidth or batteries.
The changes to Safari will be implemented as part of iOS 10, currently available to developers and public beta testers. iOS 10 will see a release this fall, likely alongside new iOS devices.
Tag: Safari
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38 months ago
Thank you! All browsers should implement a flag that stop ALL autoplay audio/video without explicit input from the user. No javascript and HTML5 workarounds. I'm fine with it impacting my browsing experience if I never have to deal with another autoplay video again.
38 months ago
...but autoplay has been a nonissue since forever if you use ClickToPlugin & ClickToFlash?!
iOS. iOS. iOS.
38 months ago
Yeah the article is using "GIF" like it's a generic term for this kind of animated image. This feature has absolutely nothing to do with the actual .gif format.
I'm personally not a fan of using the GIF term like that, it's too ambiguous. I guess we would need a shorter term than "soundless autoplaying looping inline video".
"Animated GIF" is a specific term for a specific thing with specific technical meaning--something that is widely used at that. Small looping video clips in another format, even if they serve the same purpose (and do it drastically better since animated GIF compression is embarrassingly inefficient), are no more "animated GIFs" than a RAW file is a JPEG.
We don't call a JPEG image of some text a "web page", we don't call FLAC files "MP3s", and if you start calling blu-ray discs or VCDs "DVDs", even though they all store video and look superficially the same, you're going to get some very annoyed people.
Why should any self-respecting news outlet call proper looping video clips "animated GIFs" when they're not?
38 months ago
Am I correct in assuming that by "GIFs that use the video element", the post really means "silent videos", not actual GIFs. GIFs do not appear to be a supported media format for the video element (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_media_formats), and using "GIF" — an actual file format — to refer to silent videos is pretty confusing.
Yeah the article is using "GIF" like it's a generic term for this kind of animated image. This feature has absolutely nothing to do with the actual .gif format.
I'm personally not a fan of using the GIF term like that, it's too ambiguous. I guess we would need a shorter term than "soundless autoplaying looping inline video".
We should create that term, and while we're at it, create an actual replacement for the GIF format that's both standard and portable.
38 months ago
If the no-autoplay finds its way via WebKit into Safari on macOS, there will be much rejoicing. Yes, there's now a facility to mute it once it's playing, and to locate the offending tabs, but it's still quite annoying to restart Safari and have some long-ago-paused video start blaring away.
38 months ago
...but autoplay has been a nonissue since forever if you use ClickToPlugin & ClickToFlash?!
My browser is set up very defensively to avoid annoyances and malware. I love ClickToPlugin and have been using it since it first came out (as "Click2Flash"). ClickToPlugin has the not-so-well-know option that makes YouTube and others play in QuickTime instead of their clunky web player. I can resize videos, play in proper OS X fullscreen mode, skip around without losing loading progress, reduce CPU usage drastically, and easily save to disk. And there are no ads :D[ Read All Comments ]
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