Large Magnificent Images on OPF: What Resolution?

Hi All,

Where are we getting to with this? At this point in time my view (this is me the user not the admin) is that there is no win-win on this one. Either:

A) Images are roughly 600 pixels tall to fit on smaller displays. This affects roughly 25% of users positively by fitting the image on their display. This also affect roughly 25% negatively by showing tiny images (smaller than a 4x6 in/10x15 cm print) to those with large displays.

B) Images are roughly 550-600 pixels in the smaller dimension and ranging greater than that vertically for portrait format crops. This affects roughly 25% of users negatively by not fitting the image on their display. This also affect roughly 25% positively by not showing tiny images (smaller than a 4x6 in/10x15 cm print) to those with large displays.

While landscape crops are a non-issue and can be ignored.

There is also the issue that contributors are hosting their own images. Hence they deserve some say in how their images will be displayed. I know I personally have certain detail standards in online images and I rather dislike posting images so small one cannot even tell if a shot is in focus and does not suffer from camera shake.

Please feel free to critique my analysis.

I personally favor choice B but that the deciding factor that puts me there is display height and that is one of the items on my monitor selection checklist that must be met.

<admin talking>
So practically all good solutions increase complexity (i.e., show a smaller image and link to a large version on your own site or have OPF host images). This brings forward the issue that perhaps we want the site to host images as the software allows control of the size of displayed images IIRC. But this brings forward a host of wider issues in regards to the site.

some thoughts,

Sean

Hi Sean,

Although folk may have a 1200 pixel high monitor, by the time they've got the browser title bars, etc. some real estate is lost. What would be the overhead if opf hosted the thumbnails, with the links to whatever sized image folk wanted? Would it be possible to set up a dummy thread - copy an existing one - say the central park one, or similar length, see how it looks and feels. I reckon a usable thumbnail would be about 2k of memory.

If the forum accepted scripting of some flavour, it could be made automatic - replace the image link button. On clicking it, a thumbnail of say 100 pixels square is generated, and stored on opf, within the thread. html text generated at the same time to link that image to the original. Sounds easy, but only if the forum software allows it.

There is no size to fit all, as you say. Of course, it would be well nigh impossible to see the results of folk's editing at thumbnail size.

Best wishes,

Ray