I'm not looking for your sympathy Zsolt, I am pointing out a flaw in the release as currently available and recommending other developers take action now to avoid it.
Yes, I am very much aware that the SDK has (as far as I know always has) stated that the "GIF" is "discouraged", but that does not mean there are not correct places to use them (at the very least if you wrote a web browser you would need support for them). In fact, the samples in the SDK actually include GIF images (even an animated GIF) and continue to be part of the APIDemos sample project in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. At least one reason is that the packaging system in Android can work better with PNG (it optimizes them), and in fact PNG is a better option in most cases if done properly. However, that is not always true, and in our case a GIF image had better compression to performance characteristics for some images of certain sizes and display requirements as a GIF. My point is there is a big difference between "discouraged" and "deprecated" as well as between "supported" and "not supported". The "discouraged" does not mean "don't use these because we will pull support in the future" - that is what "deprecated" means. It also does not mean "don't use these because we don't test them to work" - as that is not what "supported" means that they test it to work (otherwise it would say something like "available but not supported" or simply "not supported"). "Discouraged" should mean that you need to carefully consider if this is the right option for you and weigh the risk and reward for your particular need as there may be better alternatives. If you are going to say it is supported, which the line you copied clearly states it is supported, then it must be expected to work. If you are going to stop supporting them, then you must mark it at least as deprecated and have it in your release notes. Like I said, it works fine in the emulator and has worked for years on every device up to now, and they even continue to include it in the samples in the SDK. This is a bug in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as released on current devices and I hope that they fix it before full retail devices ship or this thread will get very busy. On Thursday, July 5, 2012 9:49:31 PM UTC-7, Zsolt Vasvari wrote: > > That has been the recommendation in the Android SDK for at least the last > 2 years. So if you do use GIFs after all this time, can't really feel > sorry for you. > > This is the exact quote from the doc and the same line has been there > since at least 1.1 when I started working with the platform: > > " A bitmap image. Android supports bitmap files in a three formats: .png > (preferred), .jpg (acceptable), .gif(discouraged). " > > > > On Thursday, July 5, 2012 11:25:10 PM UTC+8, Josh F. wrote: >> >> OK, this will be my last post on this one, but I certainly hope that >> Google will fix this in the future as I'm sure I'm not alone here. We have >> moved all images away from GIF and now everything works fine in our game. >> We will be releasing an update with the same once testing is completed. >> So, a note to Android developers: Stop using GIF or risk big problems. >> >> On Wednesday, July 4, 2012 7:32:17 AM UTC-7, Josh F. wrote: >>> >>> It is definitely nothing to do with WebKit or the browser or similar, >>> this is a standard image view in a game trying to load a simple GIF with >>> transparency. An interesting update: After updating to the latest build >>> tooks and setting the target SDK all the way up to 16 (for 4.1) the images >>> now show as just all black. Without any word from anyone from >>> Google/Android, I'm gong to just go ahead and replace everything with PNG >>> files which are all slightly larger than my GIF files which will be a >>> memory hit, but I don't see any alternative if I want a fix done this week. >>> >>> On Tuesday, July 3, 2012 11:47:04 PM UTC-7, Zsolt Vasvari wrote: >>>> >>>> And we have no idea why you mention Webkit. >>>> >>>> On Wednesday, July 4, 2012 2:03:29 PM UTC+8, Subramanya Somayaji wrote: >>>>> >>>>> We have no Idea What are the webkit changes,updates in Jeallybean!! >>>> >>>> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
