I am hearing some comments on issues with embedding gif-type images. "Only problems I have encountered so far are limited to my newest caption that’s based on a gif/mp4. I needed quite a bit of time to find a working link - imgur didn’t work at all and giphy only as a gif in non html5. Also there’s a weird message popping up on the page from my previous attempts to uploading a gif and it doesn’t go away. Imma try deleting and putting the gif back in, maybe that helps." Does our image syntax work for things like HTML GIPHY types images? Most people don't use actual gifs for that anymore, and I don't know how the site handles html5 for embedding.
Thanks for letting me know! Isn't that a problem with the image hosting sites? The only answer I can think of: a) our own hosted images on CHYOA b) our own image hosting site. Both consume massive amounts of storage space and traffic.
Actual sites work fine. Tested and the links embed elsewhere without issue. It seems to be about putting the gifs into CHYOA using our text code interface (again requested to be made GUI based). It does not seem to handle moving images (not actual .gif but evolved gif-types like GIFY aka HTML 5 based) properly. I think it might be that the base software only knows how to handle 'image formats'; some of the newer stuff may not fit inside the older definitions or container types, and so as far as CHYOA is concerned it's been given a link to something that is not an 'image' that it can embed as it understands that.
Not 100% sure you can see this but I tried embedding some gif-like stuff in this unpublished story. https://chyoa.com/chapter/Introduction.773502 I tried every method that site has that does not go to a specific site (like reddit) for getting the image to show up elsewhere and none of them work. This is a very common site now for NSFW stuff (replaces GIFY, which didn't want adult stuff on their site).
So the actual files would be https://thcf4.redgifs.com/NegligibleNewInganue-mobile.mp4 or https://thcf4.redgifs.com/NegligibleNewInganue.webm As far as I know, they can't be played in <img> tags. So we would need to embed them in <video> tags, e.g. Code: <video controls> <source src="https://thcf4.redgifs.com/NegligibleNewInganue-mobile.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> Markdown only supports <img> tags. To make video files work, we could - add some non-standard Markdown syntax to allow video tags or - replace the img tags with video tags with js when the link is a video though both things feel a little awkward.
This is how newer moving images are being encoded. The .gif which could go in <img> is rarely if ever used anymore. These newer formats are what is used now. And support for this is what people are asking for and need. Without this support, only static images can be used on the site. Technology marches on. If people are trying to put these in their stories, we need to have a way to do it. A lot of forums can handle these, so there must be an update for markdown that can do this.
I'm pretty sure that the developer of Markdown won't make any changes to the syntax as he doesn't even care to fix ambiguity issues. CommonMark seems to be a good alternative, though the specification still doesn't seem to be finished. And it doesn't support videos in the basic specification either. .webp might be the legit successor to .gif though it's obviously the decision of the websites what format they want to host. (After all, they pay for the bandwidth.)
Its very common for image hosting sites to use mp4 or webm as "gif" format because gif is horribly inefficient in encoding. Video however is very efficient. Gifs existed because videos used to be difficult to play in a browser requiring large libraries or even swf embedded players. Modern time's bring html5's video tag just like you posted above, this can be configured to autoplay loop & muted giving the same effect as a gif but for significantly less bandwidth. I just figured I'd give my 2c on why I think supporting this is important, hopefully you'll find a non awkward way to do it.
My point is we need support for whatever format people want to use or they will post elsewhere that does.
