Wide pictures --> wide text

[Serpwidgets]

Just a UAT issue to probably send back to the vBulletin developers...

I browse in 1024 X 768 (probably on the "higher res" side since the standard is usually 800 X 600) and in a lot of threads there will be a picture wider than my desktop. When this happens, the columns for that whole page of posts will be as wide as the widest picture, meaning I either have to stop and bump up my resolution, or sit there scrolling left/right with every line of text.

I realize I could "fix" this by selecting "Show image attachments and img code in Posts?" But that's annoying, I like having the pics in the threads.

Also, is this something which could be fixed with a Style Set?

 

[Rich Z]

There doesn't appear to be much that can be done about it except to delete the offending photograph, which I have done on occasion. I can limit the size of attached photos, but not the ones that are linked in from another site.

Should I just delete them? But where should I draw the line in the sand? I am using a monitor set at 1280 x 1024, but my monitor on my other system (the one with a bum power supply) is set at an even higher resolution. So when I attach a photo that is roughly 800 x 600, it will look just fine. But someone else having an 800 x 600 resolution monitor obviously will have to scroll horizontally to see the entire photo as well as any text posted.

So do I reduce this to the lowest common denominator, or just leave it be, believing that monitor and video technology will catch up eventually? Suppose when I started this site I limited photos to 320 x 240? They would be pretty puny looking right now.

There are no easy answers with something like this.

Thanks.

 

[Taceas]

Re:

I agree Serp, it's annoying at times. When you have to do more work than just moving your eyes back and forth, it's a hassle. But I don't see any feasible way of it being fixed.

There are a lot of peculiarities on this site I find distracting at times. Like the vertical ads on the right hand side, sometimes they are in the post itself, the post doesn't resize and the ad lays on top. So I have to click back and then forward again just to move it to where it needs to be.

I always resize my images I link to here to 800x600. Mostly for the sheer fact that it reduces the file size greatly. Something which my system admin loves. But I also know some people who insist on still using that Windows 3.1, oversized style.

I personally use 1024x768, so the 800x600 pictures fit well and look correct to me. Some people just don't bother resizing images before linking them to the site. I think digital cameras are still too new and/or complicated sometimes that people barely know how to get the images from the camera to the computer and then how to properly edit the pictures. It's not like film, where you go to Wal-mart get your film developed and it's always in a 4x6 format..digital pictures aren't all the same concise size, sadly enough.

I think we'll just have to endure it. What really gets my goat are the people who can't post more than one photo per post, so they end up with like 4-8 posts with a single picture each. If they'd just take the time to learn how to work the IMG button up-top, instead of just attaching. Honestly, how hard is it to type [

] ? I'm not a master html'er, but I know just enough to keep my posts clean and tidy.

Ok enough ranting. Just had a bad mood streak there and needed to let it out.

 

[Serpwidgets]

hehe, naww, I wouldn't want to force image size limits. I enjoy posting the occasional 1600 X 1200 macro shot.

I'm sure it would be possible for the vBulletin developers to
programatically enforce a "max column width" for text. What
I'm saying is the picture can go as wide as it wants, but allow
restriction on the width of the text tables, kinda like this
paragraph. It's all a bunch of HTML generated by PHP (or
whatever) so it should be a relatively simple matter to do
something like that, although it may add a bit of overhead on
the server to do so.

If it's not a direct option there's not much for you to do about it, so maybe I'll go find the vBulletin site and nag them about it.

Taceas, I've never noticed anything like the ad thing you described. You must be running XP or Netscape.

 

[Khaman]

I never knew there were ads next to the logo and on the right side until it was mentioned here my internet security filters them out.

I guess that sort of defeats the purposes of having them there...sorry Rich.

 

[Rich Z]

Khaman, well I'm sure going to make you real mad when I post a special sale offering and use a banner ad to do it, now won't I??

 

[Kat]

Misty,

Some people do not have websites to upload their images to that they can link directly to the image like that... which is why they attach them. Aside from that, even with the IMG tag you're only allowed so many pictures per post (which -I- find annoying)... so naturally if someone has a bunch of pictures to show off, they have to reply to their own threads to do so.

-Kat

 

[CornCrazy]

I've been asking around to try to find a good photo hosting site. If you know of one then please let me know. I have a free trupod site, but it won't let me link the images to another site. I am one of those people who, so far, has had to post one picture per reply...

 

[Taceas]

Re:

CornCrazy:

Yeah, I run XP but I don't use Nutscrape or IE. I'm not particularly a Microsoft fan, and I don't like a lot of the inadequacies that IE has, in my opinion. For a browser, I use Opera. It's a lot more customizable and a has a ton more features.

Yeah, you have to buy it after 30 days if you don't want ads, but I'd rather pay to continue this kind of work than IE's monoply on the market. Sides, Opera advocates the use of skins to personalize your environment. And, Opera only costs you $20 if you are a student or are lucky enough to still have your student ID handy to scan.

Opera's Website

As for a photo-hosting, doesn't your ISP alott you like 10Mb of webspace? Most ISP's do this, even my little Earthlink account has a webpage (that I don't use).

Kat:

Yeah, I realized that not everyone has a photo hosting site or just their own personal webpage after I wrote that. So to all of those out there, I'm sorry that you don't have a webpage. =P

I also agree about the photo limiting if you're linking photo's into your post. The files are stored elsewhere, and all cornsnakes.com does is just use bandwidth each time the images are loaded. But regardless, the photos are going to show up all at once anyway, whether all in one post or a myriad of replies. It would make it a TON more productive and easier to be able to most more than 5 images per post.

Rich: Maybe you should look into hosting a photo-hosting/sharing website for people who don't have their own webpage through their ISP or another hosting company. Charge a small monthly fee/yearly amount for people to host their pictures at. I don't know, just a small idea floating around. I'm sure you have more than enough work with all of the other webpages you've got.

 

[Rich Z]

Heck, I offer web hosting for only $10 per month! That's about as cheap as I am going to go for anything I offer to help out.

Someone could just get their own domain name (MyCornSnakePhotoSite.com, for instance) and upload up to 200 megabytes of images to it.

But honestly, photos eat up a lot of bandwidth. So I would have to probably lease yet another server for something like this to keep it from bogging down all the other sites on THIS server.

Not likely to happen anytime soon, I'm afraid.

As it is, all of the attached photos get stored on my server. Right now the backupfile for the MySQL databases for the various sites I am running is nearly 500 meg, which I have to copy down to my local system every day.

I want to write a FTP script to copy the backupfile to my other server instead, right in the CRONTAB called routine, but just haven't had the time to do that.