there are alot of good animations on the site, I know, but, sometimes, some of they scare the sh*t out of me because I can't see what will happen from the tumbnail.
And, good work with the update! the site loaded alot faster somehow ...
Thanks, bye, with love, myself :D

This has been discussed a lot but there is no simple way to make a preview of the flash animations by the thumbnail, i usually judge a flash by it's rating and comments (i just turn the sound off and scroll down before the flash loads)

But lately some flash animations are getting .webm versions that usually are on pause when you open then but these are usually only loops since webm can't replicate interactions and buttons.

I guess there is no real way to actually see what it is until you open that's why people end up voting on them.

Well...maybe make another image for the flash, have a screen shot of it to put over as a preview that and ones with sound should have an icon in the corner or something.
Thats the only way I can see it working.

Yeah, as Just Another Dragon already said, flash files aren't as simple as it is for other file types. There's no east way to predict what will show in the thumbnail, if anything. There's has been some discussion over alternate ways to handle it (e.g., manually uploading thumbnails, ways to automate it, mod-approved thumbnails, etc.) but it's far from actually being implemented.

Depending on what you want to block, there may be a few things you can blacklist which might help to predict some of them:

------Recommended:

sound_warning, #Sudden loud noises

type:swf nightmare_fuel, type:webm nightmare_fuel

type:swf gore, type:webm gore

sound, music, #Any sound (undertagged)

#---Probably won't do much:

type:swf creepy, type:webm creepy

type:swf scary, type:webm scary

#---These don't work very well:

#---(Delete the # to use)

#type:swf -no_sound, #Block swfs NOT tagged with no_sound

#type:swf sound_effects, #Simulated moaning

Note that both sound and no_sound are very undertagged, but they might help a little bit in some cases. Keep in mind that these don't do much to guarantee that things will be filtered correctly, but they might be worth playing with.

If you are on a computer, you can hover your mouse over the thumbnail, and provided it is tagged well, you can get a good idea of what is going to be in the flash. I mean, this works for all thumbnails, but I do this all the time for the flash thumbnails.

For mobile, you're kinda shit-outta-luck. Besides, you can't see flash unless you use a flash browser, so it's not like it matters much anyway.

I tend to overlook flash thumbnails entirely. I shouldn't, but at the same time, I can set them aside and look at them at a later date.

User-submitted flash thumbnails are in the works, we just don't have the dev power to work on it right now.

If swfchan can do it, I don't see why can't e621