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Animated Gifs?

Can someone explain the status of the platform's support of .gif files with animation? Throughout my widgets development, it's used a static .gif file taken from our servers to display information to our users. I've recently updated this to use animated .gifs instead, and I'm getting this error in my output:

KFImageView: Can't load image "http://url.of.my.animated.image"

Going to that URL in any web browser will give me the expected image.

Any ideas?

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9 Replies
  • QUOTE (t.knapton @ Aug 20 2009, 08:12 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Can someone explain the status of the platform's support of .gif files with animation? Throughout my widgets development, it's used a static .gif file taken from our servers to display information to our users. I've recently updated this to use animated .gifs instead, and I'm getting this error in my output:

    KFImageView: Can't load image "http://url.of.my.animated.image"

    Going to that URL in any web browser will give me the expected image.

    Any ideas?


    Contrary to the Developer Guide and popular belief, GIF's are not supported. Regardless of whether they work on the wdk, the hardware platforms have not licensed the GIF format and therefore do not have GIF support.
    Sorry,
    Jim
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  • QUOTE (t.knapton @ Aug 20 2009, 08:12 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Can someone explain the status of the platform's support of .gif files with animation? Throughout my widgets development, it's used a static .gif file taken from our servers to display information to our users. I've recently updated this to use animated .gifs instead, and I'm getting this error in my output:

    KFImageView: Can't load image "http://url.of.my.animated.image"

    Going to that URL in any web browser will give me the expected image.

    Any ideas?


    Can you send a copy of your widget and the wdk you are using? If the wdk is indeed loading GIF's, then we need to fix that.
    Thank you,
    Jim
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  • QUOTE (Jim @ Aug 21 2009, 11:05 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Contrary to the Developer Guide and popular belief, GIF's are not supported. Regardless of whether they work on the wdk, the hardware platforms have not licensed the GIF format and therefore do not have GIF support.
    Sorry,
    Jim



    That's weird, I thought that the .gif patent ran out a few years ago. Either way, I managed to get our feeds to give me .png files. So everything's cool.
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  • Scratch that -- I may be having another problem. Loading my (now PNG) images is really hit-or-miss. Each time it can't load an image, I can take the error output, paste it into a browser, and get the PNG that should've loaded in the widget. Any ideas?
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  • QUOTE (t.knapton @ Aug 28 2009, 12:13 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Scratch that -- I may be having another problem. Loading my (now PNG) images is really hit-or-miss. Each time it can't load an image, I can take the error output, paste it into a browser, and get the PNG that should've loaded in the widget. Any ideas?


    Can you post the code you are using to fetch the images?
    Thanks,
    Jim
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  • QUOTE (Jim @ Sep 1 2009, 09:12 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Can you post the code you are using to fetch the images?
    Thanks,
    Jim



    Sure, here it is.

    CODE
    request.open("GET", "our.feed.url", true);
    			request.onreadystatechange = function(){
    				if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
    					var xml = this.responseXML;
    					var result = xml.evaluate("xmlString");
    					token = decryptToken(result);
    					
    		                        var radar_url           = 'http://a.url.built.using.several.variables.that.yield.the.image.we.want';
    					
    					ACCUWX.weatherData[ACCUWX.locationCode].radarImage = new KONtx.element.Image({
    		      			src: radar_url,
    		      			styles: {
    		      				//this stuff's pretty arbitrary.
    		      			},
    		      			remoteAsync: true
    		      		}).appendTo(radar_container);


    That's the abridged version. Like I said, it's very hit-or-miss. It almost always gets it, but occaisionally I get the error that it can't load the image, and the big "MISSING" icon in it's place. Network lag maybe?

    Thanks for the help!
    -Tim
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  • I would need to see the rest of the code, but are you sure that the view is not being dispatched before the src is received.

    Are you specifying a loadingSrc?

    You could break the call into two segements

    1. Create a temporary holder image src and call for the XML
    2. On the return of the XML then send for the image src.
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  • Hmm, it is difficult to say with the code you posted. Can you paste the entire view your are using? If this is not desirable, can you send your widget in an email to tvwidgets@yahoo-inc.com? Make sure to put "for Jim Cortez" in the subject to make sure I get it.
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  • QUOTE (Jim @ Sep 10 2009, 10:10 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Hmm, it is difficult to say with the code you posted. Can you paste the entire view your are using? If this is not desirable, can you send your widget in an email to tvwidgets@yahoo-inc.com? Make sure to put "for Jim Cortez" in the subject to make sure I get it.


    Hey Jim,

    I actually submitted version 1.0.0 of the widget for testing to you guys. It's by AccuWeather, Inc. The identifier is com.accuweather.widgets.yahoo. Thanks to the forum, I was able to fix the problem -- now the widget waits until it gets data before building that part of the view.

    I look forward to getting feedback from the initial version.
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