There's another option, but it has similar problems to the self-assigning "animated" checkbox.
It wouldn't be too difficult for DW to run a routine when somebody uploads an icon that detects if that icon is animated, and sets a flag in the database. However, while that alleviates the possibility that somebody might forget to tick the box, it shares a number of other problems:
It would only work on icons. (It's possible that it might be able to get it to work on mood icons too, but I don't know about that.) It wouldn't work for any images that people include in the post itself - even if those images happen to be of somebody's icon. Icon posts would thus still show animated icons, even if you selected not to see animated icons.
It wouldn't be possible to 'freeze' the image on its first frame without storing what's essentially an entire extra userpic's worth of information. (Meaning that if somebody had 100 icons and they were all animated, the extra work to isolate the first frame would mean DW would have to store 100 extra icons' worth, making a total of 200 icons' worth. And no doubt people would abuse this feature and set the first frame to flick by too quickly for anybody to notice, so they could then link to the 'static' version on purpose.)
In other words, there would only be two choices at that point: Load the image (animations and all) or don't load the image at all. Granted, not loading the image is probably better in this case, if a person truly needs it, but it's something to bear in mind, and it would make it difficult for somebody to tell if it was broken or simply not displaying.
Basically, it comes down to the fact that DW simply can't do this feature in a manner that would work for everything, and even if it could, it would have to do so in a manner that wouldn't make for a very good experience on the part of the user who opted not to see animated icons.
Using the browser-based feature means that not only will every image be checked for animations, but you'll also get to see a non-animated version too, rather than the image simply not loading.
no subject
It wouldn't be too difficult for DW to run a routine when somebody uploads an icon that detects if that icon is animated, and sets a flag in the database. However, while that alleviates the possibility that somebody might forget to tick the box, it shares a number of other problems:
- It would only work on icons. (It's possible that it might be able to get it to work on mood icons too, but I don't know about that.) It wouldn't work for any images that people include in the post itself - even if those images happen to be of somebody's icon. Icon posts would thus still show animated icons, even if you selected not to see animated icons.
- It wouldn't be possible to 'freeze' the image on its first frame without storing what's essentially an entire extra userpic's worth of information. (Meaning that if somebody had 100 icons and they were all animated, the extra work to isolate the first frame would mean DW would have to store 100 extra icons' worth, making a total of 200 icons' worth. And no doubt people would abuse this feature and set the first frame to flick by too quickly for anybody to notice, so they could then link to the 'static' version on purpose.)
Basically, it comes down to the fact that DW simply can't do this feature in a manner that would work for everything, and even if it could, it would have to do so in a manner that wouldn't make for a very good experience on the part of the user who opted not to see animated icons.In other words, there would only be two choices at that point: Load the image (animations and all) or don't load the image at all. Granted, not loading the image is probably better in this case, if a person truly needs it, but it's something to bear in mind, and it would make it difficult for somebody to tell if it was broken or simply not displaying.
Using the browser-based feature means that not only will every image be checked for animations, but you'll also get to see a non-animated version too, rather than the image simply not loading.