Sorry if there's already a thread to this, but I can't be the only one who thinks it's extremely frustrating to not be able to preview a flash before I look at it. Is there a reason for this?

Yes - I do realize that some flashes like games don't really have an "automatic thumbnail", but at least stuff gifs loop and they have a preview, or have the option to upload a thumbnail with the image, etc.

Because it ruins the surprise!
/herp_derp

Yes, flash files not having thumbnails is a technical issue related to the .swf file type: they aren't images, they're applications. Also, many flashes start with loading screens, or even completely blank. It would be even less useful than the current system if the thumbnail for a flash file was just a black square with some inscrutably small text on it.

I like the idea of being able to load user-defined thumbnails with a post, but I can see such a feature being easily abused.

That, and also I feel like the white background with the black FLASH on it is a good way of discerning flashes from regular pictures. I like the idea of a preview of some sort, but there'd have to be a way to tell the difference from a picture vs. flash, if a preview were enabled. Idk I think previews might get confusing.

Jjiped said:
That, and also I feel like the white background with the black FLASH on it is a good way of discerning flashes from regular pictures. I like the idea of a preview of some sort, but there'd have to be a way to tell the difference from a picture vs. flash, if a preview were enabled. Idk I think previews might get confusing.

It would be easy enough for all flash thumbnails to be watermarked with a black bottom that has "FLASH" in white text, removing any ambiguity. The real problem is generating the thumbnail. Yes, we could depend on the userbase to generate them. I suspect that would not be much of an improvement on what we have now, but perhaps I'm not giving our contributors enough credit.

Generating the thumbnail automatically would basically be impossible. As KloH0und points out, they aren't images. Creating a "representative" thumbnail would require user input.

ikdind said:
I suspect that would not be much of an improvement on what we have now, but perhaps I'm not giving our contributors enough credit.

I'm sure the contributors will be perfectly capable of it, some of them even watch a 10 minute flash animation just to tag everything.

720p said:
I'm sure the contributors will be perfectly capable of it, some of them even watch a 10 minute flash animation just to tag everything.

Well, that's after the flash is posted and everyone can tag. I had originally imagined that the thumb would be uploaded once, at the same time as the flash. But maybe it would work to let anyone upload a thumb at any time. I don't know what that would do to the server space, or the server's cpu. It would certainly take more effort to code. But it could work.