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Videos are sequences of images. Animated GIF is a specific format for storing such image sequences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF
And if that sequence of images is stored/compressed/transmitted differently then one way could take up less space then another way. If the animated GIF is transferred/played back differently than it normally would (than a native animated GIF would) it could still present the same effect but be in a slightly different video format that perhaps requires less data to be transferred. It's described similarly in the actual WebKit update in relation to it all that is linked in the article: https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/
 
Autoplay videos make me close the site immediately, I appreciate sites need to make money but perhaps it is time for them to find other sources.
 
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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
IOS IOS IOS!!
 
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And if that sequence of images is stored/compressed/transmitted differently then one way could take up less space then another way. If the animated GIF is transferred/played back differently than it normally would (than a native animated GIF would) it could still present the same effect but be in a slightly different video format that perhaps requires less data to be transferred. It's described similarly in the actual WebKit update in relation to it all that is linked in the article: https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/

No. Because you can not transfer it differently or change its format, or it wouldn't be an animated GIF. The client (Safari) has no say in how a GIF is encoded or transfered, it has to live with what the server sent it.
 
This is a totally stupid decision unless Apple gives the user the option to turn off this behavior.

Running the iOS 10 Beta I was watching a video in a Safari tab yesterday and streamed it to an Apple TV via AirPlay. I switched the video to inline mode to continue browsing in other tabs.

In one of the tabs a site seems to have a GIF integrated as a video. It wasn't visible but Safari prepares to load it and of course my AirPlay-Video was interrupted.

Not tested it with PiP on iPad but a assume the video also stops playing when browsing a site with such an integrated video-GIF.
 
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Those annoying Flash video ads man .. I'm tellin ya Flash needs to die.
 
It's not ambiguous, it's wrong. Blatantly so. And until I read the comments, this article was making no sense at all to me because of it.

"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?

At the company I work at we implemented a digital asset management system and the developers insisted on using RAW as a generic term for any "original" photo that might be other formats like TIFF or JPEG. Being a graphics guy (you know, one of the people the system is supposed to serve) I said this was confusing because as you say RAW is specific term for a specific thing with a specific technical meaning. I said why not just use the term "originals" if they need to define the first image uploaded into the system before editing; but no we listened to the programmers instead. Now it is nearly impossible to discuss our workflow without being confused and every time we meet we have to define whether we are talking about actual RAW files or "originals" that might be other file formats.
 
No. Because you can not transfer it differently or change its format, or it wouldn't be an animated GIF. The client (Safari) has no say in how a GIF is encoded or transfered, it has to live with what the server sent it.
But the page can be designed to send it differently based on how it's all identified and how the browser supports it all. Otherwise what is the WebKit update talking about there?
 
How about changing that horrendous GUI on the iphone? The stacks design is horrible. I hate it.

Also, hopefully all apps will have built -in Safari support because I am tired of clicking links and jumping around apps. 1 will send you to YouTube , the other to Sound Cloud, the 3rd will launch iTunes store.
 
How about changing that horrendous GUI on the iphone? The stacks design is horrible. I hate it.

Also, hopefully all apps will have built -in Safari support because I am tired of clicking links and jumping around apps. 1 will send you to YouTube , the other to Sound Cloud, the 3rd will launch iTunes store.
Well, it's up to apps to support browsing inside of them. But what you are describing is sort of the other way around where apps register to take care of different content that can come up and be selected from Safari--basically YouTube will want to play back a video within its own app rather than have you watch it in Safari.
 
I just want the ability to be able to stop the animated GIF from looping. Sites that feature lengthy animated GIFs I find hurt the performance of the browser because it continues to loop.
 
The Verge is notorious for having auto play on their videos. I welcome this new change
 
I thought that's what webm or HTML5 were for?

Not exactly, it's missing the "portable" part. You would need at least two files to play an HTML5 <video> like it's a GIF: A .html file and an extra file for the video container (.mp4 or .webm). That makes it really cumbersome.

Plus HTML files represent web pages, not a single element. We need a way to specify a video should behave like a GIF without needing an HTML5 page. The sole reason of this HTML page existing is providing a bunch of attributes (muted, autoplay, looping, no-controls). Surely those attributes don't need to be part of a web page and could be included in the video container's metadata?
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Like APNG, maybe? Already exists, and appears to play in the current versions of Safari on iOS and OS X right now.

The problem with APNGs is that they're super, super heavy, due to their lossless nature. Lossless video is really overkill and not worth the bandwidth requirements. Nobody wants their web page to take 10x longer to load for an image quality improvement that isn't even perceptible. Modern lossy codecs like H.264, H.265, VP9 etc. make infinitely more sense in terms of image quality vs bandwidth ratio.
 
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Stopping auto-play videos is a big thing. Basically, doing this because the developers choose they think the right design is to auto-start a video on a website. Not questioning over how a web designed does their, its just its not in everyone view.
 
IOS IOS IOS!!
I don't care about iOS. Why would I do any heavy browsing on it ?

BTW, iOS Safari already plays YouTube videos in the native player. IDK why people download the YouTube app. It just means you get ads and can't play music in the background.
 
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At the company I work at we implemented a digital asset management system and the developers insisted on using RAW as a generic term for any "original" photo that might be other formats like TIFF or JPEG. [...] Now it is nearly impossible to discuss our workflow without being confused and every time we meet we have to define whether we are talking about actual RAW files or "originals" that might be other file formats.
Perfect example of a real-world situation where imprecise or overlapping terminology causes both confusion and lost productivity. I've had similar situations where a confusingly named thing has forced me to stop and clarify repeatedly, and just last week spent a good half day of work on something completely unnecessary because of a project with too many similar four-letter-acronyms.

At least "raw" (lower case) is technically a regular word that, if it didn't overlap with an existing file format (RAW), would be appropriate to use in that situation, so the terminology confusion is due to intransigent ignorance rather than intentional abuse. GIF only has a single, technical, specific meaning, and this isn't it.

Contrast with "on tape" or "taping" as vestigial terms for recording video even when there wasn't any tape involved; it's silly, since we have perfectly good verbs to use instead, but it doesn't really cause confusion unless you're in a niche where tape is still used.
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I don't care about iOS. Why would I do any heavy browsing on it ?

BTW, iOS Safari already plays YouTube videos in the native player. IDK why people download the YouTube app. It just means you get ads and can't play music in the background.
The "iOS!" comment was related to the fact that you (and a few other people) are talking about desktop Safari when this article is about the upcoming iOS 10 Safari.

You (and others) may have been aware of that and were just talking about the same issue on the desktop, but it at least came across like you may have been assuming this was talking about a change to desktop Safari. The poster was presumably trying to correct that.
 
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At least "raw" (lower case) is technically a regular word that, if it didn't overlap with an existing file format (RAW), would be appropriate to use in that situation, so the terminology confusion is due to intransigent ignorance rather than intentional abuse. GIF only has a single, technical, specific meaning, and this isn't it.

Completely agree.
 
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