upload animated GIFs bug?

[+DaffyDuck53]

Many times I did place animated banners on my cachepages on geocaching.com.
There were never problems, till last week.
I made a new banner (animated GIF) and placed it on a new cachepage, but is won’t work properly.
It will not animate.
The URL is https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/2be42737-1752-434f-96e7-f4b338240164_l.gif
I changed it to https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/2be42737-1752-434f-96e7-f4b338240164.gif to let it work.
 

Afther uploading to this forum it works properly, so you see.
Afther uploading the  animated GIF to the Gallery of my cache page, the structure of the gif image changes in a jpg format. Thereby the animation no longer works.
In previous cases, it has always gone well.
What is the error while uploading to https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/ 
Is it a bug? Is there a solution allowing me to upload the banner to the Gallery on my cache page?

Edited July 28, 2017 by DaffyDuck53

[+funkymunkyzone]

Yeah I've just hit this same bug.  Have uploaded animated gifs before and they worked fine, but uploaded one now and the animation has been killed.

 

[+Zonnetje]

Hello, I found the problem too and asked HQ why!

They simply gave this answer.
" We are no longer support GIF images on our website. You will need to upload a JPEG file."

I asked some more question regarding this problem but they did not answer them! 
The only response was:
"We changed the way we allow images on our website for security reasons."  

Asking for a reason for the second time and answer to my other questions, they did not answer it till now!!!
A very bad behaviour in my opinion. No warning before on the site or at the moment you are uploading a picture!

Typically a Geocaching.com HQ answer that ignores its members and does not inform them ! 
So Sorry for that!

[+thebruce0]

Zonnetje, can you remove any formatting you have in your comment please? It does not work well with this forum software. Just plain old text is sufficient, not monospaced. Thanks.

 

[+on4bam]

If animated GIFs are no longer allowed it's going to create havoc on a lot of mystery cache pages.

I just checked the page of such a mystery and the animated GIF is still working so it seems existing pages are not affected.

 

 

 

[+thebruce0]

5 minutes ago, on4bam said:

If animated GIFs are no longer allowed it's going to create havoc on a lot of mystery cache pages.

I just checked the page of such a mystery and the animated GIF is still working so it seems existing pages are not affected.

Was the image uploaded to the cache's gallery or hosted elsewhere?

But yeah, I'd think that previous uploaded images wouldn't be affected if it is a change in the upload process; otherwise it means they'd have gone through years of uploaded gallery images and converted animated gifs to static images.  If there is a change, my guess is it's the upload conversion, and agreed that existing pages wouldn't be affected, only new uploads.

Edited August 9, 2017 by thebruce0

[+hzoi]

9 hours ago, Zonnetje said:

"We are no longer support GIF images on our website. You will need to upload a JPEG file."

 

9 hours ago, Zonnetje said:

"We changed the way we allow images on our website for security reasons."

(Just quoting so folks can see it, as I missed it the first time.)

[+The A-Team]

 

11 hours ago, Zonnetje said:

Hello, I found the problem too and asked HQ why! They simply gave this answer.
" We are no longer support GIF images on our website. You will need to upload a JPEG file."
I asked some more question regarding this problem but they did not answer them! The only response was:
"We changed the way we allow images on our website for security reasons."
Asking for a reason for the second time and answer to my other questions, they did not answer it till now!!! A very bad behaviour in my opinion. No warning before on the site or at the moment you are uploading a picture! Typically a Geocaching.com HQ answer that ignores its members and does not inform them ! So Sorry for that!

This is confusing. The HQ person states that they no longer support GIFs, but I just went to the image upload page and successfully uploaded a GIF. Also, the image upload page still states "File upload supports the following formats: jpg, gif, and png."

Maybe they actually meant "We no longer support animated GIF images"?

As for them being a security risk, that's nonsense. Yes, malicious code can be embedded in images, but that can be said for nearly any image format. I can't find any evidence that there's anything inherently more risky about GIFs, animated or not.

So, in summary, they've blocked animated GIFs for no apparent reason with no notice of any kind.

[+thebruce0]

3 hours ago, The A-Team said:

So, in summary, they've blocked animated GIFs for no apparent reason with no notice of any kind.

Yep, this appears to be the case.

[+kunarion]

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

Yep, this appears to be the case.

 

So the image server is doing something naughty to the images again.  I wonder what unmentionable things are happening to the JPGs.

But it still works here in the Forum.  Go check it out:

I uploaded an animated GIF in the Forum, and placed it in my cache description: https://coord.info/GC1Z0DE

If the main site is uber-compressing my photos again (JPG), and if the Forum is not, I might upload to the cache photo thread and use that URL.

Edited August 10, 2017 by kunarion

[+hzoi]

11 hours ago, kunarion said:

I uploaded an animated GIF in the Forum, and placed it in my cache description: https://coord.info/GC1Z0DE

Quote

If you're like me, you collect accurate data about your caching activity by carefully encoding it onto rectangular plates of glass stored on thin pedestals in the field where you tend your elephants.

Yup, sounds like standard procedure to me. 

[+mommio]

Well, this wrinkle is just adding to my frustration.   First, it was Photobucket holding my pictures for ransom-$400 to be able to use them on another site,   They said I could download my albums, but then informed me I would have to download each picture individually—all 3000+.   All my caches now have to be fixed---over 600 active caches- some dating back 10 years.   I figure it will take me months to download every picture that I still need if I can’t find it on my computers.  That task of finding them on my computers should also take months.  And then uploading them again and editing every cache page will take more months.   And now. I have to determine if an animated gif is window-dressing or necessary to the cache page, i.e. puzzle caches. Wonderful,   Thank you, Groundspeak and Photobucket.  I love creating interesting and/or humorous  cache pages—1004 , in fact-- so  this really is exasperating.

[+Wæki3_KL6]

I just use Pinterest to save the animated GIF's and then reference them--often with tinyurl

I've created an animated .gif for my profile image, but they're converting it...

[+WA_Puzzler]

dadgum, I just discovered this glitch too. Very inconvenient!

[+WA_Puzzler]

On 3/10/2018 at 1:07 PM, WA_Puzzler said:

dadgum, I just discovered this glitch too. Very inconvenient!

 

Edited March 26, 2018 by WA_Puzzler
Double up

[+AMORBACHER]

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by AMORBACHER

[Johannis10]

On 8/10/2017 at 5:20 AM, kunarion said:

I uploaded an animated GIF in the Forum, and placed it in my cache description

Nice workaround idea. Thanks.

Edit:

Unfortunately I get an error message ("Third party images are not allowed in the listing") when I want to use the image address below for my cache listing. It seems that the workaround is currently no longer working.

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by Johannis10