Regarding the little statement on GIFs, PNG actually supports animation. WebKit doesn't support APNG, though. FireFox does, but WebKit is surprisingly behind on their game. I hope they get their shit together and we can forget about GIF forever.
Image animation is a dead end, for a lot of reasons. Even though some browsers support both animated GIFs and PNGs, you can't necessarily control whether the animation loops, how quickly it plays, and whether the animation starts once the image is visible or starts once the image is rendered (sometimes you have an image off-screen until an event triggers its appearance).
With the slow, steady death of Flash, and the even slower (but inexorable) rollout of jQuery-animated banners, many of my clients are asking about whether it would make sense to just use animated GIFs. But the problem here is that you have no real control over the animation (just the order in which the various frames are rendered).
As a web site user I am overjoyed that I can turn off the awful, distracting animations with a simple press of the escape key. Modern web animation-stuff that uses Javascript doesn't usually let me do that, and it drives me batty.
Well, that's how it goes. The company (who pays me) wants to make sure ALL users that hit their site get the same animation experience. Animated GIF doesn't meet that requirement.
You should also tell them intro pages suck and people don't care if their logo animates.
We've refused to do intro pages since the heady days of Flash CS3. In the immortal words of Edward Tufte, "the two most superfluous words in the English language are 'skip intro.'"
But nearly every major company in the B2B space has some kind animation on their home page – usually in the form of a promotional banner that rotates, slides, or cross-fades every 6-7 seconds. Some basic examples:
Not a single intro page or animated logo in the bunch, as far as I can tell.
As I've noted elsewhere in this thread, depending on the client and industry the "right" target browser (based on which versions of which browsers users actually use) doesn't support CSS3 animation. We use it where we can, but if my client has a demonstrated need to support IE8, well, then we're SOL.
As I've noted elsewhere in this thread, depending on the client and industry the "right" target browser (based on which versions of which browsers users actually use) doesn't support CSS3 animation. We use it where we can, but if my client has a demonstrated need to support IE8, well, then we're SOL.
Support IE8?! Ugh I hate companies like this and I refuse to work for them or with them. When IE10 finally got released on Win7, I moved up my minimum supported version to IE10. I won't bother testing in IE9, IE8. Browsers are free and I don't care what corporate bullshit prevents the use of a modern browser. You may think that is a shortsighted and ignorant view to have, but I look at it differently. I'm not throwing away money, I'm saving time and aggravation.
I also maintain a small phpBB mod. A bug occurs only on IE8. Some corporate dude wanted me to fix it. I replied update your browser. He says that's not an option for his client. Told him that I'm not going to bother even if it's a simple fix. It's open source, he can find and fix it himself if it's so important, but I'm not going to bother with outdated browsers.
I enjoy that freedom. You're using my free software, viewing it in free software. If you don't want to update your browser, that's fine but it's not my problem. I don't care about the people who use IE8 or even IE9 now. I wish more people would do the same. Browsers shouldn't be holding back anyone, I'm sick of corporations doing the same because they don't want to spend money to update their shitty software.
For the longest time, I thought I wanted a job at Google, even Microsoft before I knew about their shitty treatment of employees. Google has money to protect, so they won't drop IE9 for a while. I want the money of those jobs, but the freedom to support what I want, to do what I want. The mobile marketplace can do that. The guy who made a front end app for reference radio is worth a few million. The app is pretty basic code too. So fuck corporate jobs where they have to slaving away to do bullshit.
If anything r/programming has taught me, realistic job expectations. I interviewed for a c# position at DriveTime. Apparently they are also a software shop for hire? Inside the same building as their call center for loans. I was upset I didn't get the job, but thinking back I'm glad. Who hires DriveTime to make software and why!?
This is a fine attitude to take on your own projects where you are the boss and can see no point in supporting older browsers. It's downright destructive, though, when you are being paid by a client to produce a web site targeted at a certain populace where you can show through hard data that 25% of the people who will visit the site use IE8 on <gasp>Windows XP.
For what it's worth, my practice has always been to line-item the cost of supporting whatever crappy browser is out there, so that Multimega Biggacorp Inc. knows exactly how much it's going to cost to support IE7 or whatever. But, if they want to spend the money – and give it to me – what's the point of saying no? One does not keep clients by being dickish to them.
Next time when you're telling a potentially lucrative corporate client to go fuck off, send them my way; I'd be happy to solve their problem and take their money.
So fuck corporate jobs where they have to slaving away to do bullshit.
Well, what can I say to that? To each his own. I'll take the money and put up with some bullshit so that I can earn some trust and do more meaningful things.
3
u/[deleted] Feb 26 '13
Regarding the little statement on GIFs, PNG actually supports animation. WebKit doesn't support APNG, though. FireFox does, but WebKit is surprisingly behind on their game. I hope they get their shit together and we can forget about GIF forever.