dial up users - need your input

[back alley]

lately there have been a few people who have been circumventing the use of thumbnail photos in their posts and posting LARGE pics.

i am assuming that this is a royal pita for dial up users and perhaps others but before i make an issue of this (and start deleting the pics) i want to hear from those possibly affected.

people seemed quite concerned about the use of bandwidth when it came to the gallery pics but this seems to be less so for pics within a post.

i'd like to know wassup.

joe

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I noted the appearance of a couple of shots in a message... and started wondering how it could be done. It did cause a bit of problem when I saw it, and even in a computer with cable service the thread and the image took a bit to download.

I don't consider myself affected... yet. When you have dial-up, however, very few things load well and quickly, though...

Thanks for your concern! 🙂

 

[Terence T]

I'm not on dialup myself but I do get a little annoyed when there are several large images posted in the thread and not in the thumbnails.

Perhaps one way around this is to provide a guideline in regulating the size of pics using the "

 

[DougK]

I'm on DSL and I still prefer having thumbnails as opposed to full images in threads. That said, I think it's an easy mistake to make and no harm meant so I would think a friendly, global "how to" reminder should suffice.

 

[back alley]

i'm always friendly, ain't i? 🙂

joe

 

[richard_l]

It's very kind of you to consider us dialups. I would appreciate it if you could try somehow to promote the use of thumbnails rather than fullsize images in the posts. Maybe the software could be tweaked so that the IMG tag doesn't work.

 

[Terence T]

It's not practical to disallow the use of the

 

[nwcanonman]

"Solares said - Do you like my new avatar?"
.................................
Looks like a beautiful cat. Is he yours? Great light ~; - )

 

[richard_l]

It's not practical to disallow the use of the

 

[24x30]

From home I'm a dialin user, there I just stop loading a page which isn't finished after about 10 seconds. I prefer the thumbnails, they're fast enough.

From my office the bottelneck isn't the connection to the internet 🙂. And normally I don't load flush pages on neither connection.

/rudi

 

[Doug]

I have a fast connection and a large monitor, but it's still inconvenient when a post has an image so large I have to scroll around to see the parts of it. I usually then just download the image and edit it smaller so I can see the whole thing at once. So for this reason a size limit for post images sounds good.

 

[richard_l]

Well, I guess the majority rules. I learned HTML and coded my web sites so they would be accessible to just about anybody with any browser or connection speed. That doesn't seem to be the trend nowadays. So be it. Onwards and upwards! This way is easier. 🙄

Richard

 

[Poptart]

Just put a size limit into the TOS and then admins can delete anything too large. Problem solved!

 

[Socke]

Hm, I have 1MBit/s upstream at home and 10MBit/s at work, so I often don't realize how big a file is.

On my own homepage I usualy have the pictures at 1000x1500 and 60% compression, sometimes up to 1200x1800 at 80% but my website creates its own thumbnails.

When I'm on dialup, very seldom nowadays, then I just block image loading in firefox and open the images I think may be interesting.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

You can also go to user control panel, options, and undo the "Show Images" option. It will stop display of img tags, and thumbnails. You can click on the icon shown in the place of the thombnail to view the image. Size is shown, so you know what you are getting into.

 

[taffer]

For a while I was forced to use dial-up when my DSL provider messed up with the config, and being completely honest, many times I wished RFF would have a 'reduced' version a la photo.net, mainly plain html. OTH, maybe RFF has that feature and I haven't located it yet 😕

So I can clearly understand how frustrating it must be sometimes to wait for a page to load, and wait and wait...

 

[Kat]

I use dialup, I agree that a size limit should solve the problem. i don't mind that a pic is not in thumbnail form, just as long as it's not too big, either. Maybe max of 640 or 480 below?

I was wondering when i was attaching a pic before in a thumbnail--wouldn't this take up space in the site compared to using ?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

If you set the image display off in the user profile options, the links to the image are displayed. You have to click on the link to get the image, rather than it be expanded automatically. Thumbnailes are not displayed. Avatars are displayed, and the pifcture of the week is displayed. These should hit Cache readily, and not be too slow. The page does come up faster, especially when RFF is on the slow side.

 

[peter_n]

I would like to see just thumbnails in the threads, and I'm on cable broadband at home and a T1 at work. I can't imagine what its like for a dialup.

 

[jlw]

I thought there WAS a limit -- 550 pixels or something like that. I have been conscientiously downsizing my images to that limit.

Maybe the people who have been posting the x-large links (I've seen some of them) just aren't aware that they're causing a problem.

I don't especially like the distraction of clicking thumbnails, and often an image makes more sense when you can include it within the flow of text -- but even though I've got broadband, I agree that images large enough to need scrolling are a big nuisance.