[ARCHIVED] GIFs on Dashboard

[tdbaird]

I've uploaded GIFs for the thumbnail images representing a couple of my courses on the Canvas dashboard. When using a computer, neither myself nor my students can see the gif move - it is simply a still image. If students log in using the Canvas app, the GIFs do work. Is there a way to get them to function properly on the computer dashboard?

In the grand scheme of things this is very low on the scale of importance, but still something I'd like to see resolved!

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @tdbaird  - This is apparently a known issue.  Take a look at a very similar question and the responses here: My gif isn't giffing.  Still, it would not hurt to report it to Canvas (Help>>Report a Problem) so that you can be notified when the issue is resolved and also to help out the Instructure engineers with another use case.  I suppose the more examples they can see, the more they can figure out exactly what is causing the issue.

Hope this helps a bit, Tyler.

[rossiai]

I was always able to use gifs files in my tiles up until now. When I upload my gif I see a still image. Any ideas what might have changed?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @rossiai ...

I'm not sure if this totally answers your question, but it looks like it is a known issue.

Inst-FS gifs aren't animated on the dashboard - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

[rossiai]

Thank you for your answer, but what is Inst-FS?

I called Canvas yesterday and the technician could not figure out the problem. He escalated  the issue to Tier2

[Chris_Hofer]

@rossiai ...

Not too sure what the "FS" means, but I'm guessing "Inst" means "Instructure" (the company that develops Canvas)?  I don't have any inside knowledge on what that particular code/tag might mean.  Sorry.

[rossiai]

First, I wanted to say thank you for taking the time to answer. Then I wanted to say how weird this is. I have three published courses that use gifs in the thumbnail. The gifs work properly. 

I created a workroom - sandbox, and I imported the content from one of the above mentioned courses into this new course. The new course showed the thumbnail with the corresponding gif. The gif was moving. I decided to change the gif to a new one. The new gif did not move. To make sure the problem wasn't the gif, I replaced the new gif with the original gif. This time, the gif (which was working perfectly well when imported) did not work. It is a still image.

I decided to keep on trying. I opened a different course and replaced the still image in the thumbnail with a gif. The gif didn't work.

I am really puzzled. I do not understand why this is going on. It is very odd.

[rossiai]

I want to add that I just checked the size of the gifs. In the old course that has the working gif, the size of the gif is 4.5 MB. In the new course with the non working gif, the size of the gif is 99 KB. Just remember that the file is the same file that I uploaded to two different courses. This is telling me that Canvas is automatically reducing the file size. I am guessing this is the reason the new upload is not working.

[rossiai]

Hi, everyone. I just received an email from a L2Canvas Support Engineer. It says, "We have recently deployed a fixed for the animated gifs added to course cards, however any gifs that were added as course cards between April 13 and May 25 will need to be re-uploaded if you require them to be animated".

I re-uploaded my gif and it works. This si great!