Animations: auto play none, once, n times, forever

[maphew]

Describe feature

Feature request to have an Options preference to set default GIF animation playback to:

• Never (only if clicked)
• One time
• {n} specified number of times
• Forever (current behaviour)

Additional Information

Rational: animated gifs are helpful in demonstrating how to do something, but after viewing once or twice their utility rapidly turns into distraction from the rest of the page content.

[eliandoran]

@maphew , if the topic is strictly about GIF images, then there's not much that can be done. You can't pause GIF animations in HTML, as far as I am aware.

I think the solution is to simply use videos instead of GIF animations, since they allow pausing/resuming but also seeking, so they would be more appropriate for demonstrating how to do something.

[maphew]

Since I've encountered what I thought were start-paused-GIF on a number of sites I thought it was an easier thing to do -- not so! The best overview and list of approaches on the topic I found is "Options for Pausing the Animation of GIFs" by Dustin King - https://dking.org/blog/2019/04/options-for-pausing-the-animation-of-gifs/.

For the annoyance which sparked this feature request, (a page saved with Trilium Web Clipper) I'll just replace the GIF with something else.