#Phone browser tumblr isn't HORRIBLE

[redeemed-wren]

Tumblr gave me the gross twitter update on my desktop so I'm on strike over there, AND I deleted the app in an effort to limit screen time, so I guess I am exclusively using it through my phone browser.

That being said should I attempt to post the Boy Meets World fic I threw together on the bus yesterday? Don't really wanna post it to ao3 but I do wanna share it.

[loki-is-my-kink-awakening]

Thanks @wolfpup026 for tagging me.

1. The number of tabs open in your browser right now

5 on my computer, because I only use it for writing

96 on my phone, 99% of that is fanfiction, either ones I want to read but haven't, or want to go back and comment on. I'm a disaster. The only reason it isn't more is because it won't let me have more than 99.

2. The song you are currently loving

Ghost by Gunship feat Powerglove. Been listening to it on repeat for three days.

3. The last text you sent

Reminding my mum when we needed to be somewhere.

4. The last package you got

A dvd of Dune came through the post yesterday. I asked my partner why a dvd and he said it costs £8 for a physical dvd but £20 to stream it. That's ridiculous.

5. The last time you laughed until you cried

I don't know but I was howling after reading this little tumblr exchange.

Also, because I thought this said "last time I cried", adding in the fic that made me sob most recently.

Four out of Five by @octinary

6. The last photo you took

My furry niece Fury sitting on my lap

7. Anything you'd like to tell your followers ?

I've started playing The Witcher 3. I got myself lost in a mine/cave with a horrible spider and only got out from the help of a discord friend. 😅

Tagging if you wanna take part @mimisempai @rins-love-wins @insert-witty-user-name-here @okilokiwithpurpose @ladyofthestayingpower @jesskier @kingeomer @diabla616 @dapandapod

[foone]

I fully agree with this, through clenched teeth.

Long rant about technical details and user experience problems under the readmore

Because here's the thing: GIF is the worst format. It is from the 80s and it shows. It only supports 256 colors, it has very limited frame rates that are inconsistently implemented between viewers, it compresses your animations like they're pixelart drawings in the 80s, ie: very well for expanses of horizontal color, terribly for LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE. It didn't originally even support animation! That was hacked into it later, and badly.

It compresses so horribly for what it's used for these days. This is why sites hate it: why host a 1.5mb webm or mp4 when they could host a 30mb GIF that looks worse?

AND YET every replacement is worse for the users than the last, for one simple reason: repostability. All the sites are turning GIFs into other formats and hosting those altered formats instead of GIFs, and it's completely impossible to just save a "GIF" off Tumblr and post it on Twitter. They're different formats, despite both starting as GIF and both being called GIF by their platforms. (Tumblr does at least let you get the original GIF back. Twitter doesn't)

And even in the rare cases you can cross post from one to the other:

1. You'll probably need special software. On a desktop, not a phone. Try to download a GIF on Twitter mobile, I dare you. It's impossible.

2. When you repost it on Tumblr, it won't be considered a GIF anymore. It's a "video" now. Sites tend to handle "GIFs" and "videos" differently, even in the cases (like Twitter) when they are literally the same file format: mp4! (Twitter autoplays GIF-mp4s, it doesn't autoplays video-mp4s)

So while the replacement of GIF with technologically better formats makes sense from the perspective of someone running a social media site, it absolutely does not for a user, because the user experience is SO MUCH WORSE with GIF-replacements

An animation format should be:

1. Easy to save. Users like downloading stuff. Maybe they want to send it to someone on discord or a text message. Can't do that if they can't save your animation. Most replacements fail this because video-players in apps and browsers don't work like simple images.

2. Easy to modify. Honestly, GIF is pretty bad here too, but at least it's better.

3. Easy to upload. This one falls down all over the place. You can upload a GIF too Twitter and Tumblr and they'll both convert it differently, but they'll both support it. Try to download the Twitter version and post to Tumblr or vice versa, and there'll be problems.

4. Uploaded like a GIF. Like I said, even when you can post new!GIFs from one site to another, they tend to come in as videos, not GIFs.

5. Consistently clearly GIFs. So here's the thing that usually isn't a problem but totally could be: when you're replacing GIF with a video format, it isn't held back by GIF limitations anymore. This is good in some areas (number of colors and compression quality) but very bad in others. Imagine this: I make a Tumblr account called Best Twitter GIFs. I post a bunch of GIFs I've downloaded from Twitter, which are not actually GIFs but MP4 videos, because Twitter converts them. And then one day it's a screamer. You got lulled into a false sense of security because I said these were GIFs, but they're videos. VIDEOS CAN HAVE SOUND.

6. Not noticeably lower quality. So GIF has this thing called "lossless compression". It compresses every pixel like this is a zip file, and it's very important to get the original bits back out. This is not how jpeg and mpeg/mp4/webm/etc formats work: they are lossy, they throw away data in exchange for much better compression. When you're compressing a video to GIF, you're usually starting from a lossy source, and the color limit is already going to make it pretty ugly compared to the original. So then making it lossy again as a new!GIF isn't a big deal. But what if it isn't from a lossy source? What if it's a GIF from the DECADE AND A HALF when GIF wasn't yet being used for "short silent clips of movies/TV/etc", and it expects to be a pixel animation? Well, in most cases it's going to be ruined. There's thousands of GIFs that just turn into blurry mush when you upload them to Twitter, because it assumes they're video clips and compresses them as such.

Anyway the worst part about this is that there has been no end of GIF replacements (technically PNG is one!)

It's basically that xkcd comic about "There's too many standards". We've got mng, apng, webm, mp4, and probably a dozen more I'm not recalling off the top of my head. If we had one "GIF but better" we'd at least have intercompatibility, but we don't even have that.

Honestly like 90% of the problems of new!GIF could be solved by the sites not being such dicks about how they handle them. Let users save them and re-upload them, let them get the original GIF if they need it, etc.

i dont care what people fucking say we must defend the GIF file format at all costs