Please please please watch your graphic sizes on this forum

[traceyp]

Hi everyone

I have just been reading a thread where I've had to scroll horizontally to read the messages and why? - because someone had posted a graphic which was huge including huge text. This graphic could easily have been reduced to a more suitable size. I visit this forum in order to learn something about the things you can do with XaraX and I do NOT want to have to scroll sideways particularly when the message I am reading is long. I am becoming increasingly fed up with these sorts of postings and having to scroll horizontally to read threads simply because the graphics are so huge.

I know that Gary has posted messages about this before and at least to one specific person. However, this applies to us ALL not just certain people. As far as can recall, all graphics should be posted at a size of no more than 600dpi in width to enable people to read the message without large graphics forcing the message outside the viewable area of the screen.

PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE people, please watch the size of graphics you post in this forum. It's not at all difficult and should take no more than a few seconds to ensure the graphic is 600 dpi or less in width. There really is no need for anyone to have to scroll horizontally just to read the messages in ANY thread. Thanks.

Tracey

[traceyp]

Hi everyone

I have just been reading a thread where I've had to scroll horizontally to read the messages and why? - because someone had posted a graphic which was huge including huge text. This graphic could easily have been reduced to a more suitable size. I visit this forum in order to learn something about the things you can do with XaraX and I do NOT want to have to scroll sideways particularly when the message I am reading is long. I am becoming increasingly fed up with these sorts of postings and having to scroll horizontally to read threads simply because the graphics are so huge.

I know that Gary has posted messages about this before and at least to one specific person. However, this applies to us ALL not just certain people. As far as can recall, all graphics should be posted at a size of no more than 600dpi in width to enable people to read the message without large graphics forcing the message outside the viewable area of the screen.

PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE people, please watch the size of graphics you post in this forum. It's not at all difficult and should take no more than a few seconds to ensure the graphic is 600 dpi or less in width. There really is no need for anyone to have to scroll horizontally just to read the messages in ANY thread. Thanks.

Tracey

[pduggan]

I agree 100%! But it's not just the number of pixels that bugs me, it's the number of bytes. Yes, I know I keep harping on about this, but it really is important. (I don't think there should be an arbitary limit for file size, but I do think people should consider the compression for each piece very carefully according to its nature. Having to download huge JPEGs every time I visit some threads puts me off reading them, which is surely counterproductive as far as the authors are concerned.)

Peter</p>

Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

PS You did mean 600 pixels in width, didn't you, Tracey?

[This message was edited by Peter Duggan on October 24, 2001 at 11:26.]

[traceyp]

Peter

The figure I mentioned in my posting was what I thought Gary said it should be but perhaps it should have been pixels. Whatever the unit, it should be 600. I can't find Gary's posting at present (I thought it was easy enough to find but no!).

Gary - If you read this thread perhaps you would be good enough to clarify the exact position regarding the size of graphics uploaded to this forum. It's got beyond a joke - a not very funny joke at that. As well as this of course, as Peter says, it takes a noticeable time to download the graphics to our PCs particularly with the slower modems (I'm fortunate in that I've at least got ISDN - can't afford ADSL in the UK as yet).

Tracey

[gwpriester]

Tracey

Everybody has different size monitors and different configurations for their browsers.

I think 600 pixels wide is a fair width.

There just seem to be some visitors who think that bigger images are somehow better. Not sure I agree with that. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
Be it ever so humble...</a>

http://www.thuntek.net/gwp/flag.jpg

[Wolfgang]

Tracey,

even though I personally don't care much about pixelwidth or bytes (I have a big screen and a fast line with a flat rate), you are absolutely right!

Every posting should be targeted at users with 800x600 resolution and a 56K modem (or maybe ISDN). Everything else seems a little arrogant to me.

Steve Newport found a very good way with his "Another Animation 141K" thread. This way, you can decide if you want to invest the time for loading or not.

And as Gary said so right: The big size of the image does not make it any better.
I also very often see screenshots as poor quality (yet relatively byte-intensive) JPGs. These would have much better quality PLUS smaller filesize when saved as GIF.

Some people here - and I won't mention their name(s) seem not to care or not to know better.

Moderators: Is there a way to read out the imagesize in pixels and to allow a max. of 600 pixels width ??

Wolfgang

[pduggan]

While we're on this subject, could we please clarify what should be posted to the Xara X forum and what to the Xara Gallery? (While most of us try to observe the distinction, I can't help feeling that too many posts are still appearing here that should possibly be in the gallery.)

Thanks



Peter</p>



Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

[ajreed]

Yes I have often wondered whether a lot of what appears here ought perhaps have appeared in the Gallery, but...

As I proved some time ago, if you want a reasonably fast response, this is the place to get it. Yes I know - people don't visit the other forums as much as they could, cos little appears there (cos most of it gets posted here) and so on and so on .....

And yes - I agree - GET THOSE FILE SIZES DOWN. I often reduce the percentage figure on jpegs just to get the file size down even if it does degrade the quality because its often the illustration thats necessary not the quality. Can always post the .xar file for those interested in seeing the full quality.

And moderators - would it be too much to ask if you could *moderate* the physical image size of those who offend, in the same way you presently protect us from offending text? May I suggest for images >600 pixels in either firection, the moderator exacted punishment will be to render it at 10% of its original size and reduce it to black and white. After a while I would hope that offenders would realise these's no point in even uploading offending images.

Alan

[Ross Macintosh]

Regarding <600pix: I'm feeling the point should be reinforced that we all really need to look carefully at our images before we post them. Six hundred pixels isn't the magic number. Quite often 350pix wide is perfectly adequate. Occasionally there is are postings like those of Stuart Davis' Star Trek ships that really deserve to big really big. What is important is that we be conscious of what we are attaching. There are forum participants with just 33.6 modem connections. What is good for them is good for all of us. Conserving bandwidth speeds things up for all of us.

I have to admit that often when I export a jpg for attachment I slide the quality slider way up thinking the resulting 57k should be acceptably small. The truth is I could likely have exported the same image at 30k without any significant quality difference. I will try to put a higher priority on smaller file sizes - I hope everyone will. Threads that get many images posted in them can grow to become significant downloads! Pushing ourselves to reduce file sizes can have a significant impact.

Most participants probably don't remember when the forums switched to the infopop system. I recall we were asked by the system administrator to limit just one image attachment per thread! That certainly hasn't happened - good thing too. In those 'early days' some posters thought the 300k limit on attachments meant they were doing good with a 250k attachment. Thankfully things have evolved enough that most of us see a 100k jpg as a large image in the context of what we attach. I'd like to see us try to limit ourselves typically to sub-40k with an understanding that the less the better. In the gallery forum it is more common to just have one image per thread. I tend to think that in the gallery context sub-70k isn't too much a problem. Keep to a reasonable pixel width and you can for most images get a suitable jpg in under 70k.

I'm not bothered too much by the overlap between this forum and the xara gallery forum. Most users seem to understand that this is the primary one for discussing techniques, problems and discoveries. The gallery is just that - a gallery. Let's save it for our best work.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[pduggan]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>May I suggest for images >600 pixels in either firection, the moderator exacted punishment will be...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Surely 'tall' images can't be that much of a problem where necessary? I mean, supposing you have several small images to roll into one for a 'mini-tut' or something, it must be better (for the scrolling reasons Tracey mentioned) to arrange them tall and narrow than short and wide! People expect to have to scroll vertically on the web, and tall, narrow images don't force the table width to create the same problems with text legibility... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]



Peter</p>



Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>