Image Rotators and Gifs Breaking on the Forum

[Shokomon]

This seems to be an extension of what happened with the Lunar Herald cyclers, in that unsecure cycling images (images without "https://" in their address) break when posted on the forum. 

The forum normally just uploads the image and posts that image address instead, but with cyclers, who images change with each refresh or at set times, it breaks the link and causes the former cycler to become a static image. [This is how I understand it. @pinkgothic can describe the issue better.]

 

Because of this, Anything running on TJ Image Cycler is broken. At least, the one I had in my signature is broken [ie The digimon crest egg image would cycle between different event badges]. The gif i used for "Shokmon's Pile of Arts" has broken as well, It just shows one banner instead of the whole gif running. 

 

Anyone else have this problem?

 

[This is mostly to alert people that this is a thing. And maybe to get a new image cycler?]

[pinkgothic]

11 minutes ago, Shokomon said:

@pinkgothic can describe the issue better.

Your summon was successful! I'll try my hand at it. ❤️

 

The forum software proxies HTTP images (but leaves HTTPS images untouched). Unfortunately, it also overwrites any cache-related headers with its own in the process. Since cyclers rely on short and/or very specific cache settings, this tends to destroy cyclers.

 

That said, it looks like you should be able to just use HTTPS for the tj09 cycler service?  Try using https://tj09.net/imagetools/random/1636.png

[TJ09]

1 hour ago, pinkgothic said:

The forum software proxies HTTP images (but leaves HTTPS images untouched). Unfortunately, it also overwrites any cache-related headers with its own in the process. Since cyclers rely on short and/or very specific cache settings, this tends to destroy cyclers.

I don't think it's proxying, I think it's re-hosting. Thus, anything dynamic will stop being dynamic after being saved to the forums. This is an unfortunate but necessary thing to reduce cases of browsers warning about "partially insecure content." It's also not a bug but an intentional change in the forum software.

 

The solution, though, is correct: use HTTPS whenever possible and I don't think it'll mess with those.