I was just thinking....

[Strider]

I know not everyone has a high speed internet connection, but more and more people are getting it. What I was thinking is why can't we post images as long the image is on a separate hosting service (example : flickr) or our own website and the originating poster of the thread stating a warning like *Warning 56K modem users* in the Title? This way people could post pictures of their computers, PCMech members could post digital pictures that they took while on vacation (Post them in the General Discussion forum or even create a digital photo forum ) or a picture of a specific location of their computer problem without a person having to open a new window (I know not much of a benefit). Just thinking out loud....

[HAL9000]

Simply because this gives the person on dialup of still reading the thread without being bombarded with photos that will take the page forever to load. It also promotes a "clean" look to the site where you can read the info without having to scroll 7 miles to go through it.

A separate forum again puts dialup users into a region of exclusion for the above reasons.

This is exactly why we have removed images from sigs as well. The forum was starting to look like a mess, scrolling through to see more signature than post.

[Cricket]

Yeah, I prefer the clean look of this forum to others that allow in-line images in the posts and sigs.

I like it when the sigs use a smaller font too...sometimes the sigs look like they're a part of the post, especially the longer ones.

Cricket

[Alaron]

You can always post a link to your Flickr or Photobucket albums for us to see.

[TwoRails]

It's been a couple of years since I've read any stats on percentage, but the last I read it was about 50/50 for broadband versus dailup. I'd imagine it's not changed significantly.

[rave]

i appreciate the nature of this forum being monitored so closely. it keeps things nice and clean

[Statica]

Originally Posted by rave i appreciate the nature of this forum being monitored so closely. it keeps things nice and clean

And if you did read our rules and how we clean up the graphics of this forum, you'd have noticed that we do not allow images on our signatures here. I've removed out the ones you had on your sig.

[Strider]

Originally Posted by TwoRails It's been a couple of years since I've read any stats on percentage, but the last I read it was about 50/50 for broadband versus dailup. I'd imagine it's not changed significantly.

Well like I said I was thinking and I respect the rules, so I just do my thinking quietly from now on . However, I just want to say I disagree that broadband versus dialup hasn't change much over the last couple of years.

"NEW YORK– March 14, 2006– Nielsen//NetRatings, a global leader in Internet media and market
research, announced today that the number of active broadband users from home increased 28 percent year-over-year, from 74.3 million in February 2005 to 95.5 million in February 2006. Broadband composition among the U.S. active online population has seen vigorous growth during the past three years, increasing at least ten percentage points annually and hitting an all-time high of 68 percent foractive Internet users in February 2006."

This is from a year old article that I did a quick Goolge search on

[LeftyAce]

The dialup population has probably decreased, but from my experience with other forums that allow pictures in signitures, etc, it does get messy. Flikr links are easy enough to open...

[mairving]

I would think that well over 50% of our users would be on a high-speed connection. Probably more like 75-90%, although I have no stats to prove this. Still the cleanness of the forums is the main thing. On many forums there are so many images in signatures along with oversize avatars, randomly posted pictures, etc. that a one line post can take up the whole page. It makes it a bit more difficult to help someone IMO.

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by Strider Well like I said I was thinking and I respect the rules, so I just do my thinking quietly from now on . ...

Naw... that wouldn't be any fun

[washablemarker]

i think links will do...

but if you are concerned about dial up users, you should create an announcement/guide to help enhance the browsing experience of the less fortunate users. something with tips and whatnot. for instance, if i am not mistaken, many browsers are set to automatically load images by default, and have options which require the user to allow an image to load.

from personal experience, i know that back when i was a dial up users, i would have fallen to pieces over a guide like that.

i'm sure that in time, you can allow images within signatures, and even avatars. simple size restrictions would help maintain the orderlyness of the site that you all seem to love. and from my experience, so long as members use thumbnails rather than simply posting the images, they aren't much of a problem.

just some thoughts and suggestions.

[glc]

We did have size guidelines - and still do - but people either don't bother to read the rules or don't care and do it anyway. We therefore decided to squash almost all images. If you can't help someone with text and links, you have a problem. There are too many forums out there that look like a graphics gallery - and that is NOT what these forums are about. We certainly allow thumbnails in people's posts - and a single inline image of a SMALL size is okay. Officially the limit is 800x600 but in practice we will delete them before they get that big. We allow attachments up to 100k each - just upload your pics, folks, if you don't have a Photobucket account or similar.

[washablemarker]

i believe there exist "scripts" that will resize forum images when necessary. and you can always use imageshack. it's a great, free image hosting site. no membership required.

and it's great to see that you guys care for all users, rather than leaving slow modem users behind, weather they are a small minority or not. my props to you.

[glc]

There's another factor - we also want to keep this place friendly for those with low screen resolutions. Dealing with horizontal scroll bars is a royal pain. I'm on my laptop now, and it's 1024x768 - this is painful enough. Wide images stretch out the tables, it can't scale.

Before you simply tell people with low screen resolutions to get a new monitor, please stop and think for a minute. People who have vision issues often have no choice - I have a customer whose eyesight is SO bad he's using a 19 inch CRT at 640x480 just to be able to read it.

[washablemarker]

dayem. that's pretty bad. poor guy. but i would never tell anyone to "just get a new screen." i know from first hand experience that "just getting a new screen" can often be not all that much easy. money can really be a problem.

but you are right. again, from experience, horizontal scrolling can really become a problem even at 800x600 resolution. there are many "fixes" for this though. for instance, you may add a fit-to-width funcionality to opera, which resizes page content according to the width of your browser. and i can attest to it's greatness.

link if anyone is interested: http://webtoman.com/opera/custom/custom_buttons.php

[HAL9000]

Sure, but that is asking the member to cater to us... we take the approach of catering to the member.

[washablemarker]

Originally Posted by HAL9000 Sure, but that is asking the member to cater to us... we take the approach of catering to the member.

aha. friggun sweet. i don't come by this kind of community very often. but not all sites are like this, and something like that is good to have, if you suffer from the problem described.