Thread: The way this site handles pictures could really be improved.

You can post pics as large as you want

Yeah and that's what annoys me the most. I run my screen resolution at 1280x1024 but a picture like that embedded in a post throws the whole thread off the right hand side of my screen so that I have to scroll to read all of the text in each post. It sh*ts me no end when people do that. Fine if you have a widescreen monitor, but not everyone does.

Put it up as a thumbnail so that at least I have the choice whether to download the whole thing to my computer or not. Why should it be forced upon me?

There is also the issue of what happens to threads in 5 years time when that site disappears off the net.

Edit: See, you have now stuffed this thread. Every time I open it I have to scroll to the right. Pain in the asre.

Originally Posted by 44Ronin

You can post pics as large as you want

Actually you can not, images regardless of whether they're uploaded via the forum or hosted off site somewhere like Photobucket etc, must conform to the forum's requirements which are either 800 x 600 or 600 x 800.

Any images that are over this size will be A: rejected by the forum's software if uploaded as an attachment or B: If hosted elsewhere, the poster will be asked to resize it or faced getting it removed

.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that one because it doesn't stuff up the page width like the previous one did.

Originally Posted by silentC

Yeah and that's what annoys me the most. I run my screen resolution at 1280x1024 but a picture like that embedded in a post throws the whole thread off the right hand side of my screen so that I have to scroll to read all of the text in each post. It sh*ts me no end when people do that

My biggest pet hate apart from pen turning, are those posters who insist on embedding a huge photo instead of a thumbnail. Why do they do it? Is it the forumites equivalent of little man syndrome

I use Quick Photo Resizer with the default small setting at 800 x 600 and file size no more than 95K. The program automatically re-orients between landscape and portrait and does the job almost instantaneously. The program saves the file with _small added so you still have the orginal picture. Anyone who wishes to see any of my pictures in their 3920 x 2613, 7.8 meg glory only has to email me and I'll forward them, might take a while though .

I agree that embedded photos are a pain!
Is there any way that the forum can be configured to only allow thumbnails?

Originally Posted by Lignum

My biggest pet hate apart from pen turning, are those posters who insist on embedding a huge photo instead of a thumbnail. Why do they do it? Is it the forumites equivalent of little man syndrome

I agree, pen turning also definitely not my cup of tea, and huge photos are silly, but use of thumbnails can be just as daft. Much of thumbnail use is a left over technology from a slow web and "because we can" - all of my old websites look like that. Thumbnails are well suited for image management, like file or photo albums, and headline or home pages, side banners and ads. Reasonable size images (not thumbnails) embedded with explanatory text or alongside other images actually improves communication. While it is still done, it's increasingly common to see feature articles by on-line newspapers or magazines integrating images and text into the same window. The reason that many commercial websites do not show even higher resolution images is that they do is probably because they do not want their IP pinched.

The problems associated with the use of thumbnails really stand out for labeled or detailed pictures that directly related to associated text (which in the case of the WWF is pretty common), or when comparing images. Communication degrades when having to open, resize, move and then continually switch between a number of windows to locate a label or look at some detail in pairs of images, or between image and text based windows. It's much easier to follow any online discussion if the info is all there in the same window laid out in a logical and linear fashion. If someone posts a stack of thumbnails loosely associated with a WWF detailed post, I often skip the entire post.

Thumbnails can also be embedded into the post rather than at the end such as weisyboy has done here

A how to is explained here

I prefer thumbnails for a few reasons:

- you can fit more posts on the screen with a thumbnail.
- the thread loads quicker and doesn't hang while the pic from hell loads,
- mobile devices trying to scroll the forums are slowed by the pics and typically have less bandwidth than a PC. Mobile devices are becoming a lot more popular (phones, PDAs, iPhones etc).

If someone posts a stack of thumbnails loosely associated with a WWF detailed post, I often skip the entire post.

It's interesting isn't it, because I'm quite the opposite. I find that if someone has embedded full size pics in the middle of a post, I miss bits of the text, usually because the post is jumping around as the images are downloaded. I have to go back and read it again sometimes to see what I've missed - and of course sometimes I don't bother, but then that is my loss isn't it

Whereas a post like Weisy's with the images embedded as thumbnails makes it much easier to read the text. Not that I particularly wanted to see him in his jocks...

What I like about thumbnails is that I have the choice whether or not I want to see the full size version. Sometimes I'll just select one or two images that look like they'll show me what I want to see. And they don't interfere with the text.

There's one forum I go to that only supports thumbnails.
When you click on a thumbnail, it opens another tab/window to view the picture full size. In the same window, you can see all other thumbnails associated with the post and have to option to view them as desired.

While iceinspace do run the same vbulletin software, I'm not sure on the status of the plugin/module that performs this picture display.

(Sorry about the quality of the screen grab - 100KB limitation )

Hey Hammahed,

Like all the young people are saying, "Build a Bridge and get over it" We ALL can't have everything that we Want. You are getting something for nothing and still complaining, Jeeez

End of Rant

HazzaB

Originally Posted by Groggy

I prefer thumbnails for a few reasons:

- you can fit more posts on the screen with a thumbnail.
- the thread loads quicker and doesn't hang while the pic from hell loads,
- mobile devices trying to scroll the forums are slowed by the pics and typically have less bandwidth than a PC. Mobile devices are becoming a lot more popular (phones, PDAs, iPhones etc).

I'll second that.

I like how this forum handles pics and if I didn't I could just provide a link to a photo hosting website because it's not up to a forum to show your photos. It's nice that they do but it's not written down anywhere that they have to.

Threads load easier and the post you are reading is less likely to









jump







all over the screen if you use thumbnails.