Animated GIFs can be annoying. In most cases, people adding them to a page wnt them to be animated. In some cases, editors may prefer to have them off by default, similar to a video that doesn't play until the button is clicked. Please add a "stop animation" control to the image controls. (Normally, animated images should be set to display, unless this "stop" parameter is present.)
See also: T85838
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T18456 GIF Issues (tracking) | |||
| Open | None | T85840 Add a wikitext keyword that controls whether animated GIFs are moving or still by default |
Well, if done, maybe an improvement would be to select what frame of the animated gif to show.
Like reusing the "page=" parameter we currently have to select a page in DjVu or PDF files to select the frame to display.
It could look like this for example, maybe with a darker/larger play button for improved visibility.
From the wikitext editor's perspective, I would expect to type something like
[[File:Animated.gif |thumb|stopped|240px|Caption goes here.]]
This requires adding a new command in wikitext (e.g., "stopped"), as well as a new interface system to make it possible for the reader to set the gif back in motion.
I think that improving video support (embedded video player instead of the current popup?) is a much worthier goal than turning animated GIFs into mini video players. The bandwidth implications of using GIFs in the first place are huge and going in the wrong direction for mobile. Anything that makes animated GIFs better (and thus encourages their use) is making content less accessible by making it a lot heavier than it needs to be.
As for the ability to pause/play animated gifs in general, imho that falls in the browser's responsibility, not the web page's.
It might be better instead of fiddling with starting and stopping gifs which isn't widely supported, and they'll likely still download the whole thing. We should investigate twitter's approach.
http://blog.embed.ly/post/89265229166/what-twitter-isnt-telling-you-about-gifs