Hey Dev folks,
I've been on here for a few months now and I read rather regularly but one thing I've noticed particularly on here is the usage of gifs in articles. There are times when a gif is absolutely perfect for conveying a thought or message that wouldn't come across the same just in text. However, I've seen gifs littered throughout articles as if to have them for the sake of having a cute or funny gif in the post and it's distracting to see it reload over and over again as I'm trying to read something below or above it.
I'm wondering if there's anyone else who finds them as distracting as I do or if I'm just being a big curmudgeon about it 😅 Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Latest comments (28)
I'm neurodivergent, gifs make articles very difficult to read. I have to use tools to disable the animations. I'll grant this may violate certain service's ToS, but I've no choice if I wish for it to be "accessible" to me.
I hate gifts and joke images in an article as they're really distracting. Especially gifs, they're super annoying as they don't let me concentrate. GIF ads are even worse as you usually cannot scroll out of them.
This might be an issue with not all of the people though. I have noticed, I personally cannot stop my brain focusing on any motion picture on the TV, mobile, or any other type of screen.
In articles, yes.
In pull requests, never. I believe that all PRs need at least one GIF, because they're little sparks of joy in work that make life taste sweeter. It's also a good excuse to use more anime references at my job.
🤣 I never thought of it this way, but that's some good reasoning to use anime gifs. I'm gonna have to spice up some PR's with gifs now.
Jeeeeeez, the common average is 200KB/s? Holy shit.
This reminds me to appreciate the internet I have here in the states 😅
I honestly forget about slow-internet areas and this issue. I'm working on a new article and was adding a couple images for flair but don't add much. I think I'll take them out now.. 🤔
Human attention can't be at peak all the time. For a good learning session, you need some relief to rest your brain. Comic is a good solution for this.
Of course, a comedy show is not the best way to learn. It's just a matter of balance.
I'm on the fence on this one. As a newbie writer, they're an easy way to put some simple fun into a post that can also add decent value. As a reader though, I generally find the infinite loop factor distracting. It's great the first few iterations, but afterward my eyes are mindlessly drawn toward them and not the text.
That said, I think it would be cool to have more options as a reader of turning them off in some way, as M. Shemayev mentioned.
I'm sure there's an extension out there for Chrome that would do this. It's just unfortunate I can't add extensions on mobile.
I just wish they were freezeable or collapseable.
There's gotta be an extension or something that can handle this..
Sometimes they can be distracting, especially when they are full bleed and move fast with high contrast. But it depends on my mood whether they'll actually impact me. Usually the worst offenders are sparse enough that I can just scroll them out of view, so I haven't had to resort to more dire measures.
Not so much, no. Unless they're all over the place to the extent that it feels like I'm reading Geocities.
Where they do get in the way is in slides during presentations. They can be funny, but too often they sit behind the talker while they rabbit on about something else and you find yourself watching the cat fall over again and again and wait what was that dev talking about?