Breast Expansion Archive Forum
Discussions => Site Issues => Topic started by: Q_BE on January 13, 2010, 12:57:10 AM
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You may notice that my Jennifer Love Hewitt image homage in my signature is MIA. That is because of a coding glitch somewhere in the forum that updates my profile and displays my image at 120 x 6 pixels rather than its full-size 400x20 pixels.
Here's the code for my erstwhile signature:
[b]TZ007:[/b] "Such eloquence in the service of breasts makes my heart fairly glow to bursting, I tell you." :D
[url=http://jenniferlovehewittonline.com][img]http://i44.tinypic.com/2hykis8.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://qwizzicalbe.blogspot.com][color=#FFF47B]Q-BE's Ramblings[/color][/url]
Credit to [b]ROUNDandHEAVY[/b] for my awesome avatar! ;D
Here's what the forum makes my signature do when I update it in my profile:
[b]TZ007:[/b] "Such eloquence in the service of breasts makes my heart fairly glow to bursting, I tell you." :D
[url=http://jenniferlovehewittonline.com][img width=120 height=6]http://i44.tinypic.com/2hykis8.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://qwizzicalbe.blogspot.com][color=#FFF47B]Q-BE's Ramblings[/color][/url]
Credit to [b]ROUNDandHEAVY[/b] for my awesome avatar! ;D
Leading to this:
TZ007: "Such eloquence in the service of breasts makes my heart fairly glow to bursting, I tell you." :D
(http://i44.tinypic.com/2hykis8.jpg) (http://jenniferlovehewittonline.com)
Q-BE's Ramblings (http://qwizzicalbe.blogspot.com)
Credit to ROUNDandHEAVY for my awesome avatar! ;D
Any hope that this gets fixed soon? If not, I'll live. I've got to redo the original JLH homage again to honor my status as "Official TOF & BEA JLH Lover". :)
Q-"Wish me luck"-BE
EDIT: As an further example of the image wackiness, I present this code for you:
[img]http://i44.tinypic.com/2hykis8.jpg[/img]
Leading to this:
(http://i44.tinypic.com/2hykis8.jpg)
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Nope. It is working as intended. That is the code that is reponsible for the pop out window on attachments larger than 120 pixels wide, and in particular, it was addressing the embedding of animated gifs several meg in size that were crippling visitors' processors. As a work-around, try putting your banner in an attachment in the off topic and testing board and link your signature from there. Keep in mind when you are designing these things that they are cumulative.
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I have successfully linked it, just go grab the code.
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I have successfully linked it, just go grab the code.
Thanks for your help. I presume this means there will no longer be any direct image hotlinking from sites like Imageshack.us or others in full size? Does this also mean DJPFC will no longer be able to create his full-size "picture links" to content that has been posted to his models' websites?
Sincerely,
Q-BE
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Thanks to your continual questioning, I have discovered that images are merely displayed at a reduced size and haven't been altered in any way. Such behaviors are noted and will factor into the final decision on the modification.
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Glad to be of any assistance I can. When a verdict is rendered, I eagerly await your elaborations on the legal methodologies for including a picture in a post, specifically related to images being rendered in their full size on the direct thread, such as my "Welcome Wagon" posts as we have discussed in the past. :)
Yours truly,
Q-BE
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I respectfully inquire to the mods as to what verdict, if any, has been rendered on the subject of image content in posts and the automatic resizing function that inhibits full-size pictures from being direct-linked to posts?
Sincerely,
Q-BE
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I am with Q-BE on this one. Sometimes we need to make the inline image a little larger. If the BEA owner is worried about some kind of abuse then a forced size limit of something like 1024x768 could be imposed. But to watch all of our best efforts be auto-shrunk into a max of 120x120 makes our hearts sad. :(
Mod edit: I don't know what, if any, changes have been made re: this concern. If the matter hasn't been resolve to your/Q_BE's satisfaction yet, and what you request is reasonable/doable, I'm sure Auto_Reply can assist you. You're always much better off PMing a mod directly (so as to start a dialog) than simply posting a query publicly and waiting for someone to wander by. -Palomine
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Intriguing that this thread would be re-upped as I return to the Net world from a lengthy absence yet again. :)
Anyway, from what I have learned over the period of time this restriction has been in place, pictures that are "hotlinked" directly from the internet to posts are automatically reduced to a thumbnail size. You may notice this most glaringly in the images posted on the various model threads by our dearly beloved DJPFC, which are hotlinked from PinupFiles/PinupGlam. Whether he has noticed or whether he cares is an entirely different matter, but what is possible is to select the option to "View Image", which in most cases means the browser will load only that picture into the browser window/tab, and when you do so, the hotlinked image previously crushed to a shadow of its former self will instead gloriously expand to its true proportions, freed from the damnable tyranny of the forum PHP coding!!!…… >:(
…ahem, got a little carried away there. :P
Almost as an aside, if you attach the picture to your message in order to display it full-size as you were planning to do by hotlinking into your post, you can do this:
(1) Post it initially as an attachment.
(2) Click the image to view it through the pop-up window viewer of the forum.
(3) Copy the HTML code that the forum generates to display the image in the pop-up viewer (either by copying the URL bar or by selecting the "copy image location" function in your browser).
(4) Having done all that, edit your message, placing the code you copied into an [IMG] UBB code tag at the point in your message you desire to have it.
(5) Save your modified message with the attachment and now also the full-size image you wished to display in the first place.
Frankly, I think it ruins the effect for some posts when you're trying to use an image as the whole message, as g00ber, pedonbio, JJ, and others often do.
Q-"My two more cents"-BE 8)
Mod edit: re: the thumbnail size issue, there are some trade-offs. We'll be trying a change and we'll see how that works. Making them too small creates problems in some situations and too large creates other problems. NO setting will please all users all the time.
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OK, we're experimentally increasing the thumbnail size to 500x500 pixels.
Due to some crazy/stupid limitations in the forum software, this is what's going to happen: any image that exceeds 500x500 pixels in height or width will be scaled down (for display only) to fit inside a 500x500 pixel area. However, any image that is smaller than 500x500 pixels in height and width will be scaled down to fit inside a 250x250 pixel area.
I know: that's absurd. That's the only way it seems to work, though, and we can't currently do anything about it.
We look forward to your comments. ;)
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JMHO feedback as a user, but IMO, the 500 pixel stamp is too large, given that so many full-size images are barely much bigger than that... so big are the 500 pixel stamps that the total data/time needed to load them AND the original image often seems 175% as long/large as loading the original image itself, almost defeating the purpose of having a low-rez/'quick' loading stamp/preview (though you can forego opening the full rez images and just 'DL link' from the stamp as always of course). Since the new larger stamp size went into effect this AM, the total load time for threads feels perceptively longer to me.
Plus, such large stamps have to make popular threads ridiculously long (to scroll through) for users still running 1024x768 screens.
Again, JMHO and I defer to the opinion of the masses.
To wit:
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The first load of any page since the thumbnail size was increased should be slower because the new bigger thumbs are being downloaded instead of being fetched from your browser's cache. Try revisiting some pages you loaded after the change; do they come up faster the second time?
In any case, maybe 400x400 would be better?
Pal replies: Yes, once cached it'll come up faster (than the first load) regardless of size. I was pointing out that with the big stamp almost as big as many original images, it's almost/essentially as if they've got to be loaded twice. I personally prefer stamps to be fastish/smallish (since that best serves their function IMO) but again, I'm content to go along with the majority feeling on this. :)
gonZo muses: Hmm. Reading back in this thread, I see that (by increasing the thumbnail size) we're basically working against a modification that A_R got the admins to install back in January.
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Seeing attachments much bigger is a pleasant surprise...much better than those really tiny postage stamps of just 24 hours ago. But I take Pal's point too. The attachment should be big but not too big. How big is too big has yet to be defined. I guess the real test will come when I try to embed an image into an actual post, as opposed to attaching it.
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Well imagine my surprise when I logged in today and enjoyed awesome visible attachments. W00T! Thank you mods for all your hard work!
And when kept to 400x400 the load speed is definitely NOT impaired (unless of course the member is connecting via a 300-baud acoustic modem on a Commodore VIC-20).
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We're still at 500x500 at the moment, but maybe we'll try 400x400 later today (Saturday). As Pal pointed out, we ideally want them to be big enough to show a decent amount of detail, but small enough to provide a significant load-speed advantage.
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Well ... yeah ... that's my home computer setup except I've got a faster 2400 baud modem.
And it's amazing how XP runs on a 6502 processor once it boots up from the data cassette.
;D
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We've downshifted to 400x400. Please let us know how this works for you.
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Q-BE Note: Post from thread The Next Food Network Star -- Aarti (http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,9982133.0.html) reposted here for on-topic discussion
Q, we just increased the size of the thumbnails to 400x400 at your request... so why have you started image-tagging your attachments? Most people can see the images just fine at 400x400. (In fact, the 400x400 image in your post looks better than the big one IMO, because they're so low-def.)
Okay, I've fixed the post. If you really want to know why I "image-tag" my attachments, I usually find that the positioning of a picture within a post can say as much as the picture itself. It's a bit frustrating to have a picture you'd like to display FIRST at the bottom (as I wanted to do in the post above).
As to the image attachment thumbnail size being changed at my request, that's news to me. I well remember the thread in which we discussed that, but I'm far from being the only one to credit (or to blame) for that particular change. If I were actually that powerful, I'd make all BEA women spontaneously grow 12 cup sizes, but as they say: wish in one hand, sh*t in the other, and see which fills first. ;)
Q-"But thanks nonetheless"-BE
EDIT: Perhaps this discussion and this edited comment should go in the Site Issues thread (http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,9980056.0.html) covering this topic, however, I noticed that images that are below 400x400 in resolution default to an even smaller thumbnail size, such as my recent post of a Nanny McPhee pic in Word Association (http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,89491.msg10064887.html#msg10064887), and additionally, the picture no longer becomes a clickable link to the pop-up picture window of we all have become so fond. Just some thoughts on this perennially-frustrating code monster we call a forum. ;)
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Thanks for fixing your post, It wasn't broken or wrong, but we don't want to encourage people to do that, because images posted that way load twice and defeat the purpose of thumbnailing.
You make a good point about position of the image relative to text, but in a case like that, it would look better to post your attachment in a trash thread in the Off-Topic forum, then post the image-tagged link in the thread where you want it. (As we've explained before, though, if you post an image in the OTF with the intention of image-linking it in a second thread on the same day, the 1-1-1 rule applies to the image-link in the second thread because that's where you intend the image to be seen.)
Yeah, we have a couple of conflicting scripts thumbnailing images in the forum, so images smaller than 400x400 get scaled to 250x250, and external image-links get scaled to something pathetic like 150x150. It's partly the crappy forum software and partly a modification we were testing to prevent large animated gifs from slowing down the forum. It all needs to be sorted out, but you already know what sort of timetable that will happen on. :-\
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gonZo
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Thanks for fixing your post, It wasn't broken or wrong, but we don't want to encourage people to do that, because images posted that way load twice and defeat the purpose of thumbnailing.
I've only done that a few times since I discovered that it was a work-around solution for the inability to insert images of relative size directly into the posts without the awful 150x150 image-resizing the forum does to external image links, which has occurred since we rebooted the forum after the 2009 Forum Fastapazool. :-\
You make a good point about position of the image relative to text, but in a case like that, it would look better to post your attachment in a trash thread in the Off-Topic forum, then post the image-tagged link in the thread where you want it. (As we've explained before, though, if you post an image in the OTF with the intention of image-linking it in a second thread on the same day, the 1-1-1 rule applies to the image-link in the second thread because that's where you intend the image to be seen.)
Yeah, I understand the rules of your suggested work-around perfectly, however, I've never been entirely comfortable with posting a "Trash" thread simply to attach an image to a post to which I would like to link externally in another thread. I think I take that from my early forum days, at a movies forum which shall not be named, where I tended to struggle to make on-topic posts and where threads I posted were continually scrutinized by others for appropriate content and context. Not a fun way to live, if you ask me. ::)
As an aside, do you think you mods could create an official Off-Topic Forum sticky "Trash" thread to which we users would be directed to post attachments of images which we would like to link externally in other threads. That would be, of course, provided we only post images of a reasonable size (say less than 800Wx1200H), and provided we submit links to the posts wherein our internally attached, externally linked pictures reside, subject to the 1-1-1-1 rule?
Yeah, we have a couple of conflicting scripts thumbnailing images in the forum, so images smaller than 400x400 get scaled to 250x250, and external image-links get scaled to something pathetic like 150x150. It's partly the crappy forum software and partly a modification we were testing to prevent large animated gifs from slowing down the forum. It all needs to be sorted out, but you already know what sort of timetable that will happen on. :-\
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gonZo
Well, at the very least, I'd like to see the script fixed that borks attachments smaller than 400x400 and prevents them from being made clickable by which they would be opened into our wonderful pop-up image window. It would be a start. :P
Q-"The Owner's going to have to pony up some money here, eventually"-BE ::)
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/me can't stop giggling * ;D
You did it! You really did it! Un-flippin'-believable! :D
Q-"You think you've seen it all…"-BE
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As an aside, do you think you mods could create an official Off-Topic Forum sticky "Trash" thread to which we users would be directed to post attachments of images which we would like to link externally in other threads. That would be, of course, provided we only post images of a reasonable size (say less than 800Wx1200H), and provided we submit links to the posts wherein our internally attached, externally linked pictures reside, subject to the 1-1-1-1 rule?
Done. It's (unimaginatively) titled "Image Attachment Thread". The mods will have to discuss whether the 1-1-1 rule also applies inside that thread. For the time being, assume that it does.
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Done. It's (unimaginatively) titled "Image Attachment Thread". The mods will have to discuss whether the 1-1-1 rule also applies inside that thread. For the time being, assume that it does.
Hmm, that IS an interesting conundrum. It would be difficult to have ONE thread be different. On top of that, it would be even more work for you mods to ascertain that every photo is legitimately part of another thread. I think we may really be making the problem worse than better. I think sticking to 1-1-1-1 inside that particular thread should be the rule because it's just easier that way. For those who may use it, it might only be once a day anyway, so there you go.
Q-"Solutions more difficult than problems at the BEA? Of course!"-BE :P
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Gonzo is in heaven ! ;) ;D
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After thinking about it, I tend to agree that 1-1-1 should apply in both the Image Attachment Thread and the thread where you link to your attached image. The "one exceptional thread" confusion you mention is one reason. Another is that we'd like this "linked image from OTF" method to be something people use only when it's justified (so that it won't undo the loading-speed gains derived from thumbnailing). Limiting users to one of them per day (by asserting 1-1-1 inside the OTF thread) gives everybody the option to use it, but not the option to overuse it.
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Great idea Gonzo. This has been on my mind for a while.
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After thinking about it, I tend to agree that 1-1-1 should apply in both the Image Attachment Thread and the thread where you link to your attached image. The "one exceptional thread" confusion you mention is one reason. Another is that we'd like this "linked image from OTF" method to be something people use only when it's justified (so that it won't undo the loading-speed gains derived from thumbnailing). Limiting users to one of them per day (by asserting 1-1-1 inside the OTF thread) gives everybody the option to use it, but not the option to overuse it.
This is pretty much the same logic I've been using in this situation. The only thing I am a little bummed about is the idea that the picture "to be linked" applies to 1-1-1 in both the thread it's attached (the Image Attachment Thread) and also the thread in which it is subsequently linked full-size (for effect). You're basically getting only 1 image for the price of two.
I was thinking maybe a slight modification in the rules of the game whereby you can post exactly 2 images per 24 hours in the Image Attachment Thread, to make up for that shortfall. If you didn't want to do that, maybe you could exclude the 1-1-1 for images specifically linked from the Image Attachment thread when users additionally provide the appropriate "post link" reference (located in the title of every post) to the picture in the Image Attachment thread. This would function somewhat similarly to what users do in asserting copyright (because they place information about their copyright in the post of the pictures they want omitted from the 1-1-1 rule).
Let me know if either of those two ideas seems feasible to you.
Q-"The idea man"-BE 8)
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Great idea Gonzo. This has been on my mind for a while.
It was my idea, actually, but I don't care who gets the credit. This is awesome. 8)
Q-"Damn the forum code! Full speed ahead!"-BE ;D
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An image posted in this thread counts as your one-post-per-24-hours in this thread AND in the thread where you post the image-link to it.
gonZo
counts as your one-post-per-24-hours in this thread AND in the thread where you post the image-link to it.
That seems kind of harsh but it is your house not mine.
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counts as your one-post-per-24-hours in this thread AND in the thread where you post the image-link to it.
That seems kind of harsh but it is your house not mine.
I'm still discussing options with Gonzo in the "Auto Image-Resizing" thread. Stay tuned.
Q-"Tougher to work out than a Middle East Peace Deal"-BE :P
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That seems kind of harsh but it is your house not mine.
We thumbnail images in the forum to make the pages load quickly, but this alternate form of image display works against thumbnailing and slows down page-loading, so it's intended to be used for exceptional cases. You can still post as many ordinary attachments per day as you want (provided each one is in a different thread, as described in the Posting Limits section of the Forum Rules.).
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This is pretty much the same logic I've been using in this situation. The only thing I am a little bummed about is the idea that the picture "to be linked" applies to 1-1-1 in both the thread it's attached (the Image Attachment Thread) and also the thread in which it is subsequently linked full-size (for effect). You're basically getting only 1 image for the price of two.
I was thinking maybe a slight modification in the rules of the game whereby you can post exactly 2 images per 24 hours in the Image Attachment Thread, to make up for that shortfall. If you didn't want to do that, maybe you could exclude the 1-1-1 for images specifically linked from the Image Attachment thread when users additionally provide the appropriate "post link" reference (located in the title of every post) to the picture in the Image Attachment thread. This would function somewhat similarly to what users do in asserting copyright (because they place information about their copyright in the post of the pictures they want omitted from the 1-1-1 rule).
Let me know if either of those two ideas seems feasible to you.
Q-"The idea man"-BE 8)
But you're NOT getting one image for the price of two; you're getting one image for the price of ONE. If there were a limit on the total number of images you could post per day throughout the forum, THEN you would be getting one image for the price of two. There's no limit, though, so there's no "price" for posting any image by this method (or the ordinary method).
The 1-1-1 rule just says that you can't post more than one image in the same thread in any 24-hour period. Using one image-tagged link per 24 hours gets you no closer to breaking the 1-1-1 rule than posting an ordinary attachment does. So there is no "shortfall" to make up for.
Regarding your second idea: that's too complicated, and it creates new rules to violate: the mods would have to moderate users who sporadically or chronically fail to come back and edit-in their post link references.
The advantage of doing it as I set it up is that all of the usual rules still apply, so there are no exceptions for anyone to remember. (The mods have to remember that we're waiving the "duplicate posts" rule when the OTF thread is involved, but that's relatively easy.)
I don't want to spend the week debating this. Let's try it this way for now, ok?
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Is it me, or does this discussion feel strangely similar to the discussion over the "Welcome Wagon" attachment we had a few months back?
Anyway, I only meant that "one image for the price of two" in the sense that it's the same image file you're posting in two different threads, once as an image attachment in one thread for the purposes of posting the image full-size in the other, and having that single image count as your image for the day in both threads seems rather silly, but I understand it's for simplicity's sake rather than anything else. So, rather than fight the power, at least we now have an official "Garbage" thread to throw images we'd like to share full-size in context elsewhere.
Q-"This just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser"-BE
PS. Personally, I don't think that "Garbage" thread needs to be a sticky. It's not necessary, and it takes up space at the top of the page.
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Yeah, the Welcome Wagon thing was a bit different, but the issues are related.
If the OTF thread were not sticky, and nobody used it for a while, it would get pushed off the index page and become difficult to find, and people would start creating their own threads for the same purpose. Rather than having dozens of threads in OTF containing 2 or 3 images apiece, it's more organized to use one sticky thread. So let's do that.
I've moved the comments from the OTF thread into this one, for two reasons: to keep the discussion in this thread, and to reserve the OTF thread JUST for the posting of images. The OTF thread isn't a discussion thread; it's only a tool for posting elsewhere.
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Now I know that I am really going to screw this up. I am totally confused as to where I can post what. I hope I don't break any more rules.
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Here's the deal: you can continue to post attachments in your messages as you usually do (observing the 1-1-1 rule, etc.), but you can use the OTF thread once per 24 hours to prevent one of those images from being thumbnailed. If you screw up and it's an accident, we'll fix it and let you know what you did wrong. Nothing to worry about.
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So I see a new sticky thread in the off topic section, read what it has to say about it being a dump for random images so that an image resizing quirk can be circumvented so that some users can maintain an intended post formatting scheme. So far so good. Then I follow the "history" line back to the more lengthy description here...
From all the talk I come away with two basic questions (and yes I reviewed the reasoning behind this move and yet the questions persist)
1) If the thread in the off topic (OT) section is not really a thread but something akin to a dump or "testing" post area then why make it sticky? Really, so what if it slips a little? People who need it know it is there and the sticky "Auto Image Resizing" post here in the site issues section will always point the way - in fact it could have a link from here to the dump thread in the OT section. There are a few "just testing" threads in the OT anyway and those could also be used as dumps for these special image needs, no?
2) Just how critical are these image proportions that they need to maintain a specific size or format? If the forum software really is messing things up to a degree that we are having to invent this remote thread post image link set up then we should be looking into what manner of post it is that needs to retain the rigid format or just how messed up things are with the software.
I feel my thoughts on this stem from not ever having had a problem with our posts in KC Strip as our comic has always been 745 pixels wide and up until the last forum upgrade (the one that thumbnails) Kithara or I had always employed the post, then edit with internal link technique (as Q_Be described). It just feels like a bit more fuss and things to keep track of.
Also, I see a sticky thread as a very special distinction and to have one just be a dump is a bit off-putting.
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We added the sticky thread because somebody said earlier that creating his own thread in OTF for this purpose was off-putting.
1) This thread right here is not sticky, and never will be. The OTF thread will remain sticky, because we want users who are new to the concept of posting tagged image links to be able to find it.
2) I think I described the degree that the forum SW is messed up earlier in this thread. Yep. Long story short, this is an interim measure until other solutions can be implemented via the engineering staff.
Granted, it's a little bit more to keep track of. Other people may have different image-posting needs than you do with KC Strip, though, and we're trying to accommodate them.
Cheers,
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gonZo
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1) If the thread in the off topic (OT) section is not really a thread but something akin to a dump or "testing" post area then why make it sticky? Really, so what if it slips a little? People who need it know it is there and the sticky "Auto Image Resizing" post here in the site issues section will always point the way - in fact it could have a link from here to the dump thread in the OT section. There are a few "just testing" threads in the OT anyway and those could also be used as dumps for these special image needs, no?
Well, as Gonzo has said, he's trying to keep the threads referencing the topic and problem to an absolute minimum to make it easier to moderate. What we're really trying to establish is a workable solution to this "image resizing" problem so people don't post random crap everywhere for the sake of reposting it elsewhere, while also keeping to the essential rationale for the thumbnail resizing in the first place, which is to save on speed and loading time for users with slower internet connections.
2) Just how critical are these image proportions that they need to maintain a specific size or format? If the forum software really is messing things up to a degree that we are having to invent this remote thread post image link set up then we should be looking into what manner of post it is that needs to retain the rigid format or just how messed up things are with the software.
Well, the "manner" of posts that need images in full-size varies from person to person. For example, you may want to use this new thread in order to thumbnail-archive your KC Strips while also reposting them in your thread in their full glory as you used to be able to do before this change happened as a result of the 2009 Forum Fastapazool. In your case, you wouldn't be subject specifically to the 1-1-1 rule because you are posting your own content (provided that you give your copyright notice in both the Image Attachment thread in Off-Topic as well as the KC Strip. Of course, for you that might seem a little redundant since both threads are sticky threads in the Off-Topic discussion, but I trust you understand my point.
I feel my thoughts on this stem from not ever having had a problem with our posts in KC Strip as our comic has always been 745 pixels wide and up until the last forum upgrade (the one that thumbnails) Kithara or I had always employed the post, then edit with internal link technique (as Q_Be described). It just feels like a bit more fuss and things to keep track of.
Funny enough, it is precisely this "post picture attachment, then internally link the attachment" method that this thread is trying to solve, because Gonzo says that method defeats the purpose of the attachment thumbnails in the first place by **77** the forum to load the same picture twice in the same post, both as an attachment and as an internal reference. The fact that I did this very thing in another thread led to this current discussion between me and Gonzo and caused the creation of that sticky thread you now see.
Also, I see a sticky thread as a very special distinction and to have one just be a dump is a bit off-putting.
I agree the sticky topic seems off-putting, but right now it's the best workable solution we've got so far. I feel better by far having a single go-to thread in which I am licensed to place images for the purpose of placing them full-size elsewhere.
Q-"How do you think about that?"-BE
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EUREKA! :D
I think I've finally figured out my problem with the larger size thumbs in the forum threads.
Now I know I'm probably in the small minority of users who use a dial-up connection for web access, and I expect a certain amount of delay in loading web pages, particularly if it contains a good bit of graphics. But the load times on the threads since increasing the size of the thumbs have been a lot worst that I expected.
Now I do have my browser set to use a local 512 MB cache, which does help in re-displaying the images in a thread page I frequently return to, but loading any new images seems to take forever, even when the thumb is fairly small, and by that I mean much less then the current 400 by 400 resolution.
I've also encountered this other bug-a-boo where I can end up getting a partial thumb of some image in a post, and no matter who many times I reload the page it stubbornly refuses to load the missing part of the thumb.
Then while looking at this older thread on morphing Halle Barry http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,455605.0.html I noticed that some posts had these double images in them, consisting of both a larger size version, and a smaller version of the same image. Anyway what I noticed is that the larger image loaded much more quickly than the smaller size one.
Investageting further I found that the larger version was always a JPEG file, and the smaller one was always a PNG file. That was when I realized that when anyone attaches a picture file to a post the thumb generated by the forum is stored as a PNG file.
Now what possible difference does that make, you might ask.
Well it turns out that while browsers can display image files in a PNG format, they don't do this as efficiently (read that as: quickly) as when the image file is in either a JPEG, or a GIF format. And based on some tests I tried I can say that for both Firefox, and IE 8.
So my question is: Why are all the thumbs that are generated in the forum threads stored as PNG format files?
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We don't have an answer for that question, except to say that the plug-in script that scales and creates the thumbnails saves them as PNGs, and doesn't give us a choice about it. PNGs don't use any file compression, so --as you've seen-- the thumbnail image is sometimes a substantially larger file than the full-sized image, even though the full-sized image may be much bigger in height and width than the thumbnail.
The old, small thumbnails were PNGs that contained a maximum of 62,500 pixels. The new ones contain a max of 160,000 pixels, so the potential file size has increased by almost 100,000 pixels per attachment. So yeah, this should be significantly slower, and may drive anybody who's still on dialup crazy.
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Sorry G - have to disagree with you on one bit of your post.
A bitmap image stored in a PNG format is compressed by means of an algorithm that provides lossless data storage. This is different than a JPEG stored image, since JPEGs employ lossy data storage, that is to say, some data is thrown away and not recovered when the JPEG file is decoded to view the image.
That's one of the reasons I think it takes a bit longer to view a PNG file since much like a ZIP file it must receive all, or at least a greater share of the data, to decode the image for viewing. And unlike a JPEG, none of the bitmap image data was done away with when it was first saved in to the PNG file, and a PNG decoder must decompress and fully restore the bitmap image data to the way it originally was.
In any case I guess what I was really asking in my previous post was, if there is no compelling reason to use the PNG file format for thumbnail storage, might it be possible to switch to using JPEG formated files for the thread thumbnails?
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I agree with that distinction, but the drift of my comment was that .png isn't nearly as space-efficient as .jpg. Yes, there may be a way to unhook the png-making altogether, but even if we agree to do that, I wouldn't know which thing to ask the admins to remove or adjust.
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Did Space Ghost use his shrink ray on that one, Itfields? ;)
Mod edit: use right-click/open in new tab to get the full size image. -Pal
Yeah, that doesn't work for us Mac users.
Control-click (or right-click) the image to bring up the contextual menu, then choose Open Image In New Window.
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Or for Firefox, drag the image to the new-tab button on the tab bar for full-size new tab goodness.
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Did Space Ghost use his shrink ray on that one, Itfields? ;)
Mod edit: use right-click/open in new tab to get the full size image. -Pal
Yeah, that doesn't work for us Mac users.
Worked for this Mac user. On Safari, no less.
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It's a full-sized pic, scaled down with HTML; just save it to your desktop and open it to view it in full-sized glory.
I think I remember one of the members here having an avatar like that too; it looked small but unscaled it was the size of the screen and that's why it took so long to load...
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Or for Firefox, drag the image to the new-tab button on the tab bar for full-size new tab goodness.
This also works in Safari for Macintosh! Cool!
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This also works in Safari for Macintosh! Cool!
also on chrome while we're adding
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While on the derail, may I ask why the pictures are resized? As arflech pointed out, we are still downloading the full-size image, it's just presented in an inconveniently small size. I understand automatic resizing to a point, but the pictures are just ridiculously small on this forum.
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Attachments larger than 400x400 pixels are scaled proportionately to fit into a 400x400 space for display.
Attachments smaller than 400x400 and all linked images are scaled proportionately to fit into a 120x120 space for display.
The thumbnailing was installed to make image-heavy forum pages load faster. Three different scripts are accomplishing it, we don't know which script is doing which thing, and we doubt the admins could fix it.
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Attachments larger than 400x400 pixels are scaled proportionately to fit into a 400x400 space for display.
Attachments smaller than 400x400 and all linked images are scaled proportionately to fit into a 120x120 space for display.
The thumbnailing was installed to make image-heavy forum pages load faster. Three different scripts are accomplishing it, we don't know which script is doing which thing, and we doubt the admins could fix it.
That's a completely different issue: In that case, if you tried to save the image instead of saving the link-target, you actually get a smaller image; server-side thumbnail generation does make forum pages load faster, but client-side HTML scaling does not.
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arflech, please scroll back to message #176 and examine the displayed picture file. As I wrote, there are three scripts doing the resizing, and they're not all doing it the same way.
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Any chance we can get linked images scaled to 400x400 as well? Or does that require the same amount of Script-Fu? ;D
Good suggestion, but any changes have to be made by the admins, which narrows the chances of getting it done. Compounding that, it's probably safe to say that nobody knows or remembers which scripts do which parts of the thumbnailing.
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so... I'm not trying to be a dick, but using that HTML attribute doesn't make the page load any faster. It just tells the page to display it resized to a smaller resolution... it still has to download the whole image. If you look at the properties of each image loaded that way, they have the same file size as the full version. Perhaps I'm completely misunderstanding something here, but I think you need to have some kind of server-side script to save and resize the images in order to actually save bandwidth, which doesn't make any sense if the images are being stored on another website anyway.
To repeat myself, differently-sized/attached images are handled by different scripts, some of which are more efficient than others. Thumbs for attached images over 400x400 pixels are created and stored server-side, but they're converted to png format for display, so they're often larger (bytewise) that the unscaled original files. We know we need something better, but getting it will be difficult for a number of reasons.
So yeah, this forum software isn't very good at displaying images, and after we discovered that, the admins installed a couple of modifications to fix it, but those actually just made the thumbnailing even weirder.
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Perhaps these off-topic posts should be moved to the "Image Auto-Resizing" thread, dear Gonzo?
Anyway, I thought the "Image Attachments" sticky thread was designed to take care of this problem, at least for one thread per day. The point of that thread is for you to attach something that would otherwise be auto-resized, so as to take the forum code for the attached image (which would normally display in a pop-up window) and copy/paste it into the specific post you want it to be displayed full-size.
A funny aside to that is that if you are not logged in, the attached pictures that are rendered as images using the previously-described methods will not appear, seeing as how the forum does not display any pictures in any format (except images hosted on other sites) to non-users. For certain browsers, that will mean seeing a big, fat, "X" image, while for others, it simply won't show.
Q-"All about making the BEA image experience better"-BE 8)
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I'm okay with doing the attachment method, I'll make a point to use that going forward. It's just some extra steps. If any scripting gods volunteer their time to fix the code, we'll all be eternally grateful (almost as much as we are grateful for boobies...) ;D