GIF Use Should Be Planned for the Mobile Environment's Restrictions

GIF Use Should Be Planned for the Mobile Environment's Restrictions

On any website that strives to be respected by the public at large, video-based media files hosted directly on web pages are rightfully prevented from automatically playing as soon as the page is loaded. A given video must be triggered only by the user voluntarily clicking on the space clearly designated for it by the website's design; typically, this will be a static thumbnail image in which a clearly displayed symbol representing "play" will be overlaid on it. One recent innovation in web design has resulted in various websites using self-animating image files, often in the GIF format, in place of static images in these thumbnails. These do a more comprehensive job "previewing" the contents of the video in an unobtrusive way for users who may be casually browsing the website.

There are many online utilities that make it easy for web designers to export pieces of video-based media as animated image files. Furthermore, most of these programs support a feature that records what is displayed on the user's monitor and then exports GIF files from selected areas of the recording. A free example of this is GifCam, which can record GIF files of any size and can be adjusted to create compressed video recordings of specific segments of the screen. The similar tool located at ScreenToGif.com offers advanced editing features for the GIFs that are recorded. An equivalent for Mac computers named Gifox is a paid utility that offers a freely downloadable version with restricted features; unusually for online development programs, the paid version is extremely inexpensive and does not require a subscription.

It should always be remembered that implementing a GIF file as a representation of a waiting video file adds to the footprint of the web page in question. Since GIF files tend to occupy much more file space than static images, users' browsers would have to spend more time fully bringing up the page. Google is likely to penalize a website's potential placements in its generated results pages if it sees the website's performance as sluggish, so these GIF files should be used with caution. For more information click here https://timingapp.com/?lang=en.

GIF Syntax Web Design Restrictions Mobile Environment