I’ve been trying to post gifs, but the experience changes from mobile to desktop. Sometimes it appears and plays properly, sometimes it doesnt. Is there a best-practice that I should get used to for formatting, or is there a reliable image hoster that supports it in a way thats compatible with Lemmy?

I just want to share tha spinning mouse dammit

  • @chaoraceEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    It didn’t work when I tried it: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/853240

    If you inspect the source, you can see that a PNG thumbnail was automatically extracted from the webp and used for the expando image, even though the link source points to an animated webp.

    • PyroEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      Strange, I’ve posted animated WebPs (on another account) and they worked as you’d expect. Perhaps it’s a setting or some other kind of version difference between instances?

      • @chaoraceEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Well, it’s not a frontend thing as far as I can tell because the expando also uses the thumbnail image when viewed on lemmy.world. I’m aware of some instances (e.g.: blind, lemmynsfw, etc.) that use a forked UI which might explain the discrepancy – is it possible that the post you’re referring to was hosted on one of those?

        Otherwise, there’s something going on at thumbnail creation time, possibly a bug, which I’d like to research further. Could you share an example post where the expando image was an animated webp? It doesn’t have to be one of your own posts, of course, assuming you’re worried about creating a papertrail to your alt account.

        • PyroEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          I’ve just posted a WebP to a random test community I found: https://lemmy.world/post/1486008

          For me, I can see it animated in the thumbnail and the expanded post both on lemmy.world and the mobile apps I use (Voyager/wefwef, and Liftoff).

          • @chaoraceEnglish
            3•1 year ago

            Interesting! I tried uploading the same image and it became static (link). I think that seals it – definitely a backend issue. The question remains as to why that’s happening, but it’s definitely tied to something about the configuration of the user’s home instance. Credit where it’s due: exactly as you’ve suggested

            • PyroEnglish
              3•1 year ago

              Your image appears static for me too!

              Credit where it’s due

              I’m a developer by trade, we tend to have relatively accurate hunches about these things haha
              Hopefully this is something that can be fixed (or at least toggled per-user) soon.