Safari in iOS 10 Offers Improved Animated GIF Viewing and Stops Noisy Autoplay Videos

[MacRumors]

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. [...]

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.

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.

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.

Article Link: Safari in iOS 10 Offers Improved Animated GIF Viewing and Stops Noisy Autoplay Videos

 

[44267547]

That is helpful for Auto start videos and restrict the spam features. Both those features were in need of improvement.

 

[LordQ]

Welcomed fix. Now, if videos could bypass rotation lock like the YouTube app, my videos experience would be complete.

 

[Dilster3k]

Snappier. Snappier. Snappier. Okay done.

 

[CarlJ]

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.

 

[sudo1996]

I hope they fix the unusually high CPU usage for displaying animated GIFs. I use Safari primarily and have always been annoyed with that one quirk, which has occasionally made me fall back to Firefox for certain sites. Also, any long-awaited animated PNG support? EDIT: CarlJ has pointed out that APNG has been supported in Safari for some time now.

 

[KALLT]

I wish that Safari for OS X gets an option to prevent autoplay.

 

[eoblaed]

And the improvements just keep coming. Nice.

 

[Chaos215bar2]

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.

 

[997440]

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.

This reported change in macOS doesn't completely stop auto-play, but it'll help --

.....
Most websites that detect that Flash isn't available, but don't have an HTML5 fallback, display a "Flash isn't installed" message with a link to download Flash from Adobe. If a user clicks on one of those links, Safari will inform them that the plug-in is already installed and offer to activate it just one time or every time the website is visited. The default option is to activate it only once. We have similar handling for the other common plug-ins.

When a website directly embeds a visible plug-in object, Safari instead presents a placeholder element with a "Click to use" button. When that's clicked, Safari offers the user the options of activating the plug-in just one time or every time the user visits that website. Here too, the default option is to activate the plug-in only once.
.....

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-flash-and-other-plug-ins-by-default.1977575/

 

[entropi]

...but autoplay has been a nonissue since forever if you use ClickToPlugin & ClickToFlash?!

 

[Michael Goff]

...but autoplay has been a nonissue since forever if you use ClickToPlugin & ClickToFlash?!

iOS. iOS. iOS.

 

[keysofanxiety]

But is it Snappier™?

NO!

NOOOOOOOO

 

[lostngone]

I just want WebM support.

 

[Cineplex]

They've had since about 1993 to improve animated GIF support. Really? This is still on the list?

 

[pgiguere1]

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.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

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.

 

[adamjackson]

I want this to extend to all of WebKit OS-Wide on all platforms Apple makes. I hate GIFs. They should have died when broadband reached a certain saturation point. Instead, the world is infected with low resolution, low FPS GIFs of videos minus sound. I subscribe to Gizmodo (and other gawker properties) in RSS and Reeder for Mac / iOS will be terrible with sometimes 8 auto-playing GIFs wrapping just 200 words of actual text.

I want GIFs to be click to play across Web Kit w/o auto playing the same way videos are being treated.

 

[heeloliver]

Now we just need WebM.

 

[rmbpuser]

Native HTML5 player is in a need of revamp.

 

[CarlJ]

and while we're at it, create an actual replacement for the GIF format that's both standard and portable.

Like APNG, maybe? Already exists, and appears to play in the current versions of Safari on iOS and OS X right now.

This reported change in macOS doesn't completely stop auto-play, but it'll help --

Thanks. Yes, I get this behavior in the Safari Technology Preview, which I've been using as my primary browser for some weeks now. It means that I don't have to use ClickToPlugin any more (which was useful, but got hung up on things sometimes, including, quite annoyingly, YouTube). I've gotten now to where I just plain don't have Flash on the system any more (well, except the copy embedded in Chrome, if I really need it), but this only stops plugins, not autoplay for native HTML5 video. And that last bit, I would love to have.

 

[Jme Saunders]

I just want WebM support.

Now we just need WebM.

I was going to say this. I think Apple might be reluctant because of the lack of hardware decoder. However, this does suggest we might seem WebM support. Or they're going to make H.264 MP4 the norm.

 

[sudo1996]

...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

 

[simonmet]

This all sounds smart and fair but I can't say I ever noticed a gif-like video (or gif masquerading as a video) before or had problems with animated gifs.

Also by "muted audio element" I hope they mean an audio track that's been switched to silent (mute) regardless of its content. Muted can also mean soft, quiet or quieter than usual and I'd hate to see this exploited or taken advantage of.

 

[aleni]

Sweet. This is going to be great for reddit and imgur users.