[gonZo]

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.).

[gonZo]

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

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?

[Q_BE]

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.

[gonZo]

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.

[Magiciano]

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.

[gonZo]

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.

[Nimrod]

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.

[gonZo]

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,
_
gonZo

[Q_BE]

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

[SamV]

EUREKA!  

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?

[gonZo]

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.

[SamV]

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?

[gonZo]

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.

[DJPFC]

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.

[Trace]

Or for Firefox, drag the image to the new-tab button on the tab bar for full-size new tab goodness.