Animated gif issue and workaround

This tip is an extension of my earlier tip on how to add animated gifs to your apps:

Once again, thanks to @tsuji_koichi for showing me how to use animated gifs in the first place.

Iโ€™ve encountered an issue in which using an animated gif in more than one spot caused the animation to stop in the second spot. First, to help you understand the issue I encountered, Iโ€™ll use a gif to explain why I was using the same gif in two different spots:

3X_f_6_f6ca7dc21b1b9fe5623f208b8f77482f75027359.gif

These images are from the โ€œHelpโ€ menu I have placed in the lower left of my bottom bar to help users learn how to use my app. The app is designed to help Japanese people in their study of English so the app is built in the target language, English, but Iโ€™ve added a blue flag that can be tapped to access Japanese translations. Accordingly, I have many pairs of pages where the same image or gif is used. I found, however, that this sometimes caused one of the gifs to stop.

SOLUTION: Make a second virtual column for the image, and then, using the CONCATENATE expession, append โ€œ&jโ€ to the url. This makes a URL like

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1tDadE-zmrmso0NTRMXpG4ojGI3lpabEG

become

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1tDadE-zmrmso0NTRMXpG4ojGI3lpabEG&j

Both URLs access the same gif but the additional text seems to cause AppSheet to treat the two separately and that seems to eliminate that movement stoppage issue.

By the way, the idea of appending text is one I got long ago in a different context from @praveen . He informed me that once AppSheet had sucked up an image from my app, it would not reread it unless the URL had changed. This issue came up because I found that editing an image but not changing the URL had no effect in my app. Since then, Iโ€™ve made a habit of always using a new name for new images instead of following @praveen 's advice about appending letters to the old url. Today, however, the trick I learned from @praveen came in handy. Thanks @praveen !

P.S. I had sent an inquiry to support@appsheet.com about this but it hasnโ€™t be resolved yet. I suspect itโ€™s not an easy issue to fix on the AppSheet side. So, this workaround on the creator side may be the better way to go. Iโ€™ll send the URL of this tip to them today.

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Now thatโ€™s what I call a hack! I LOVE IT!3X_d_5_d51363a862e7ab883241c312ac5d7f271579cdd3.gif


PS: Thatโ€™s a lot of praveen tags

Thanks!! Praveen deserves all those tags โ€“ though I seldom get to interact with him now that heโ€™s rich and famous.

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