This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

GIF Animation Preview

Description

This plugin finds every GIF animation in your posts and replace it to a preview image. Doesn’t matter the GIF embedded from another website or use WordPress’s static thumbnail. It automatically generates the preview image from the first frame of the animation and save it to the post’s media directory with -gap.jpg suffix.

Posts show the pregenareted small size jpeg file first, your visitors don’t need to wait for download the huge animation. Play animation after they click on the image or after your whole page has downloaded. It depends on your setting:

  • You are able to stop animations everywhere
  • Or start animation automatically only inside a post
  • Or start the moves everywhere by default, use this plugin for lazyload

There are additional settings:

  • Pretty smooth effect between your preview and animation
  • Start animations with your mouse
  • Work with metadata and preview
  • Disable on certain images with nogap class

Don’t worry, delete this plugin will remove all settings from your database. Generated preview images gonna stay there, you can use them everywhere until you delete them manually.

On GitHub:
https://github.com/SubZtep/gif-animation-preview

Screenshots

  • This is the admin interface at the moment, you will find something similar
  • Blog preview but your content

Installation

  1. Upload plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/gif-animation-preview/ directory
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. Find Settings > GIF Animation Preview on your admin interface

Preview images generated on the fly, first view of the posts might be slow

FAQ

Does plugin load gif animation directly with preview?

Animation loads after clicking at preview on mobile browsers but loads automatically on desktops.

Does it delete the generated preview image after delete the original post or original image?

No. It can’t be sure you use the preview image somewhere else. If you don’t need preview anymore you need to delete it by yourself from the media directory.

Does it add any watermark on the preview image?

No, it only generated clean image with separated play button on the top.

Does this plugin modify anything in my database?

No, everything is happening on the fly. Once you deactivate, you get back your original posts (fyi it stores your settings in wp_options table, as usual).

Can I use it with Infinite scroll plugin?

Yes, you need to add gapStart(); to the callback area on admin.

Can I use it with Aruna template?

Yes, open wp-content/themes/Aruna/functions.php with a text editor and add $teo_nolazy = true; line after <?php (second line) for turn off template’s lazy load function. Go to plugin’s admin and turn on metadata overwrite.

Can I disable on certain images?

Yes, add nogap to image class attribute and plugin will not work.

Reviews

April 29, 2017
Just logged in to give this plugin 5 stars. it's exactly what I had in mind. such an incredible work. it's totally compatible with 4.7.4 ...
January 1, 2017
better then other gif-player plugins.
September 3, 2016
Mostly does all of what it says it can do. One thing I noticed is that the lazyload does not work, at least with my theme... the7.3 by DreamTheme. It creates the preview image with the icon but does not lazyload the gif. The gif still loads in the background regardless of any user interaction or plugin settings. Feature suggestions: Pause, stop and play icons. If possible, show the current frame of the gif when paused or stopped. Maybe speed up the transition for the preview image to gif animation. Ability to enable or disable on select post types and and pages. Also if possible, maybe an loading status... would be nice for large gifs. Prime the gif so that you don't have to wait for the entire gif to load before playback begins. Thanks
Read all 12 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“GIF Animation Preview” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Changelog

1.10.3

  • Disabling on certain images with nogap class

1.10.2

  • Find images with parameter on client side (Jetpack’s Photon compatibility)

1.10.1

  • Remove jQuery check (still required)

1.10

  • Handle gifs in metadata
  • Handle post thumbnail html (thanks for Akis)

1.9

  • Smooth animation switch
  • Start animation with mouse event
  • Install plugin create default settings
  • Delete plugin remove every settings from database
  • Retina ready banner and some text by @Starlin_

1.8.2

  • Support infinite scroll with callback

1.8.1

  • Better GIF animation detection

1.8

  • Able to prevent automatically start animations only on mobile browsers

1.7

  • Preload images on non-mobile browsers
  • Faster load (less js, includes at the bottom)
  • Upgrade imagesLoaded plugin to v3.1.8

1.6.1

  • Better PHP 5.0 compatibility

1.6

  • Admin interface for preview method
  • Started own fork of GifPlayer JavaScript

1.5

  • Handle WordPress’s static preview

1.4

  • Allow images from external source
  • Only test image when preview doesn’t exists
  • Unicode fixes in filenames
  • Decrase PHP version requirement from 5.2 to 5.0

1.3

  • Uses gifplayer and imagesLoaded libraries
  • Decrase PHP version requirement from 5.4 to 5.2

1.2

  • Add PHP version and GD check

1.1

  • Fix unicode issues

1.0.0

  • Plugin’s creation