I’ve been trying to post gifs, but the experience changes from mobile to desktop. Sometimes it appears and plays properly, sometimes it doesnt. Is there a best-practice that I should get used to for formatting, or is there a reliable image hoster that supports it in a way thats compatible with Lemmy?
Well, it’s not a frontend thing as far as I can tell because the expando also uses the thumbnail image when viewed on lemmy.world. I’m aware of some instances (e.g.: blind, lemmynsfw, etc.) that use a forked UI which might explain the discrepancy – is it possible that the post you’re referring to was hosted on one of those?
Otherwise, there’s something going on at thumbnail creation time, possibly a bug, which I’d like to research further. Could you share an example post where the expando image was an animated webp? It doesn’t have to be one of your own posts, of course, assuming you’re worried about creating a papertrail to your alt account.
I’ve just posted a WebP to a random test community I found: https://lemmy.world/post/1486008
For me, I can see it animated in the thumbnail and the expanded post both on lemmy.world and the mobile apps I use (Voyager/wefwef, and Liftoff).
Interesting! I tried uploading the same image and it became static (link). I think that seals it – definitely a backend issue. The question remains as to why that’s happening, but it’s definitely tied to something about the configuration of the user’s home instance. Credit where it’s due: exactly as you’ve suggested
Your image appears static for me too!
I’m a developer by trade, we tend to have relatively accurate hunches about these things haha
Hopefully this is something that can be fixed (or at least toggled per-user) soon.