Are "certain" people just retarded or my monitor is way outdated ?

[grumpydoc]

I am always surprised that modern cameras take pictures at such huge resolutions.

I'm not - it's because the manufacturers got into a "more pixels = better" marketing dick-size war.

SMF supports width & height attributes for images so it really isn't hard, you just have to add width=1024 (or thereabouts) to your image tag.

I suspect that the problem is the many people genuinely don't understand how big the images are because every other tool auto-resizes them to the display size.

There are some SMF extensions to improve image handling on custom.simplemachines.org. I don't know whether Dave would be willing to have a look at any of them but I'm sure he could find something to help without having to start writing code himself.

[GeoffS]

I've spent a bit of time this evening looking at SMF patches (modifications) and can't find any that really help with image size issue.
As pointed out, it is possible to change the way a large image is displayed by changing image tags but the user should have to resort to this level of hackery - the forum software should take care of it.
Perhaps someone could make their fame and fortune by writing such a modification? Well fame maybe, OK, grudging admiration...

Until then, it's a problem we'll have to live with.

[mariush]

See these two: 
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2518
http://portamx.com/3005/tip-highslide-for-rescaled-inline-images/

Both use HighSlide (javascript) library to rescale the images and all that : http://highslide.com/

[grumpydoc]

Or http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1197

[GeoffS]

I must admit the sort of mod I was looking for was one that reduced the size of the stored image rather than just rescaling it to suit display conditions.
This would reduce the amount of disk space that images use, a great help to Dave's reported backup issues.

Of the two SMF mods mentioned above, one is not compatible with the version of SMF used in this forum, the other can't be installed automatically and requires multiple files to be edited. Doing so presents a real risk of breaking the forums over what is a minor, although annoying, issue.

[grumpydoc]

Something like this http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=252, then?

[madires]

Also is there any SMF add-on that can limit the resolution of the uploaded photos ? This will definitely helps on Dave on maintaining his server storage capacity too.

Not that I can find. There are modifications to limit image size for images linked to an external site (photobucket, etc) and to limit the size of the upload based on file extension but nothing that limits the dimensions of an uploaded image.

Since it's a linux box you could use imagemagick (mogrify) the rescale large pictures stored locally. For external pictures there are two solutions. Simply fetch the picture and store it locally (prevents also broken posts if the picture drifted into the void) while using mogrify. Or scale them down by HTML (just for displaying, but the large picture is fetched anyway by the browser).

[GeoffS]

Since it's a linux box you could use imagemagick (mogrify) the rescale large pictures stored locally. For external pictures there are two solutions. Simply fetch the picture and store it locally (prevents also broken posts if the picture drifted into the void) while using mogrify. Or scale them down by HTML (just for displaying, but the large picture is fetched anyway by the browser).

Any solution will need to be plug-n-play and not one that requires programming, testing etc, Dave doesn't have a dedicated IT team to support any other sort of solution.

[mariush]

You could implement one of the solutions that just resize the image in browser.

It would still be better than nothing, and can be removed when you figure out a solution to have the images resized on upload.

[Hydrawerk]

I have a 17 inch LG LCD monitor 1280×1024 pixels. It's enough for me. When it's PSU breaks down, I will replace it in a minute, because it's an external 12V power supply. 

[mariush]

I have a 17 inch LG LCD monitor 1280×1024 pixels. It's enough for me. When it's PSU breaks down, I will replace it in a minute, because it's an external 12V power supply. 

Eventually the CFL lamps with die out and you'll find out that when you add the shipping, they often cost more than a new or second hand 19-21" monitor.

[madires]

Any solution will need to be plug-n-play and not one that requires programming, testing etc, Dave doesn't have a dedicated IT team to support any other sort of solution.

Please see http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=89.0 at the bottom:

"Resize images when showing under Post - Limit the size of the image when displaying within the forum. This is useful when you have specified a width for your entire Forum and you do not want the image to stretch further distorting your Forum look."

[free_electron]

If it is a picture i typically scale it to 1024 768. Unless i want to show as much detail as possible , like a teardown picture where tou can read all part numbers.

As for screenshots. I try to scale em too . But the point is that today a lot of people run dual monitor setups... So in my case a 3840 1200 screengrab would be possible... ( i have 1920-1200 monitors la2405x from HP)

[steve30]

For reference, I like how phpBB3 handles embedded images and attachments. I think it does it much better than this forum.

For an idea, see http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=525&start=575. (Not sure if that page requires login or not).

Unfortunately I don't know how to actually go about improving SMF.

[Hydrawerk]

Eventually the CFL lamps with die out and you'll find out that when you add the shipping, they often cost more than a new or second hand 19-21" monitor.

OK, I am not gonna use that monitor forever.

[Rasz]

limiting upload dimensions (not file size) or resizing server side post facto are BAD, sometimes you want to show that pcb in detail and you need that 3000x1800 picture. Its fine as it is (having to click to make it bigger)

[GeoffS]

limiting upload dimensions (not file size) or resizing server side post facto are BAD, sometimes you want to show that pcb in detail and you need that 3000x1800 picture. Its fine as it is (having to click to make it bigger)

When this is necessary, you can post a link to an external image on a remote site such as dropbox, photobucket, etc.
This seems to work quite well on other forums on which I'm a member, especially those that run software which allows the administrator to limit photo size (dimensions) as well as file size.

[ve7xen]

It is a question who comes with his hat in his hand. And that is the one asking a question. It is in his best interest to rub those who can answer at least remotely in the right way, by following a few established standards, instead of giving a flying fart.

From your attitude I would say the question is more whether you consider your fellow posters peers or otherwise. Not every discussion on this board is about someone seeking help.

limiting upload dimensions (not file size) or resizing server side post facto are BAD, sometimes you want to show that pcb in detail and you need that 3000x1800 picture. Its fine as it is (having to click to make it bigger)

I tend to agree. Server-side resize is a blunt instrument. If you're not willing to store both a display-size thumbnail AND the full-size image, I'd argue that just keeping the full-size image and resizing in browser is the better option. Storage is cheap and most people have plentiful bandwidth as well. Also the browser-side fix is much simpler to implement.

I never noticed that SMF supports a width attribute for img tags. That's helpful.

[amyk]

Here's a little snippet of CSS that will cause images to resize to the width of the user's browser window:

Code: [Select]

<style>.bbc_img {width: 100%;}</style>

[GeoffS]

Here's a little snippet of CSS that will cause images to resize to the width of the user's browser window:

Code: [Select]

<style>.bbc_img {width: 100%;}</style>

And how exactly is a user supposed to use this? 

[grumpydoc]

Here's a little snippet of CSS that will cause images to resize to the width of the user's browser window:

As long as it isn't applied to all images indiscriminately because I edit mine down to an appropriate size (and host them myself unless it's a *very* quick post) and would be a bit put off if mine were stretched to fill the browser window no matter what.

[Rasz]

Here's a little snippet of CSS that will cause images to resize to the width of the user's browser window:

Code: [Select]

<style>.bbc_img {width: 100%;}</style>

And how exactly is a user supposed to use this? 

Its for website .css file
but good browsers have something called user.css, you can even enforce it with userjs/greasemonkey

[MacAttak]

This CSS would probably be better to globally make it so that by default any image will not attempt to display more than 1024 pixels wide (or make the max width whatever you want).

Code: [Select]

img{
    max-width:1024px;
}
It would be added to the custom CSS file for the forum theme, or if the admin console has a way to inject custom CSS via a configuration setting.

Users would not need to do anything differently.

It would not do anything about storage quotas - you could still upload files as large as you want.

I'm pretty sure the width attribute on the img tag that you can use with BBCode would still work (for the advanced users who tend to make use of BBCode or know enough about it to alter the image tags that get inserted into posts).

------------

The best solution is a PictureBox module (sometimes called a "Lightbox") for the forum.

And I continue to stand by my own interim solution of hosting the images in my own posts on a site like imgur and remote-linking to them to eliminate storage costs, and then always specifying the width attribute on the img tag in BBCode format so that the posting shows up the way you want it to.

------------

For most forums, I would agree with the sentiment that people need to have their hands held. But this isn't a typical forum. We are kind of expected to be somewhat technical and have some basic comfort with computers.

[mariush]

And I continue to stand by my own interim solution of hosting the images in my own posts on a site like imgur and remote-linking to them to eliminate storage costs, and then always specifying the width attribute on the img tag in BBCode format so that the posting shows up the way you want it to.

Problem with that is that half a year, or a year from now, imgur and other hosts may go bye bye (bankrupt, bought by others etc) or they may delete old files and then some forum member tries to see your post and your pictures and they no longer resolve to anything.

The old excuses (pictures taking too much disk space, too much backup space, daily backup takes too long), bandwidth is expensive etc... are just excuses, and weak ones.
You can add a 500GB-1TB disk to a server for 5-15$ a month, you can get 100 mbps unmetered bandwidth for under 100$ a month (server included), backups should be incremental (backup only differences not the whole drive) etc etc

The only valid reason against large pictures is imho that  takes too long for pages to load to people with slow connections... 

a good idea would be to store on the server both a 800x600/1024x768 version AND the original full size picture. Then, when clicking on thumbnail, show the resized picture with a link at the bottom of the picture to the full picture.

[Rasz]

a good idea would be to store on the server both a 800x600/1024x768 version AND the original full size picture. Then, when clicking on thumbnail, show the resized picture with a link at the bottom of the picture to the full picture.

This is how it works right now, by default you get ~100x100 thumbnails, they only change to original big image if you click them.
This is perfect and "just works". I really dont know what the "just retarded" OP was about when he created this topic.