Screenshot of the Day Rant

[BlueFlames]

I like my home internet connection. I really do. I can pull three to five megabits downstream in any given second, and that makes me happy in ways that can only be rivaled by sex. I grabbed a ninty meg file in forty-five seconds yesterday, and I was happy. I can upload a queue of files dozens of megabytes long in under a minute, and it makes me happy. I grab the server list for Halo (or any other game for that matter), and I get to gripe about pings over 100 milliseconds because I know that my connection isn't the problem.

What makes me unhappy is waiting. Unless your webpage is hosted off of a 56k connection in Siberia, it should really pop right up, images and all, on demand. It's not that unreasonable a request, since I go to all manner of website laden with images and video (which is generally just getting in the way of the content, but that's another rant about a different website).

That said, I found it highly distressing when I opened up my e-mail and web browsers concurrently, and found that the SSX webpage (set as my homepage) was still loading after I had finished checking my e-mail *cough*spam*cough*. The fugly "thumbnail" for the SSOTD told me what the problem was, but I'll provide the technical lesson for the hell of it.

With the HTML image tag, there is an option to force an image to be displayed within certain dimensions, regardless of the image's actual size. (Killjoy's actually gone a step further, setting it up so that smaller images will not be stretched out of proportion, but believe me, I'm not complaining because of thumbnails that are too small.) This is often used by webpage designers when preparing a site for dynamic content, where an image could change and throw off the layout of the rest of the page. It's also used by lazy/ignorant page designers who want to make static pages of thumbnail images without actually going to the effort of resizing the images for the thumbnails.

What someone has forgotten is that the image is not changed in this process, so when you upload a 1400x1050, 160+ kilobyte screenshot, it may be displayed in a nice 100x75 blob, but it is, in fact, still a 1400x1050, 160+ KB monstrosity that should never, ever be substituted for a thumbnail. Real thumbnails should be resized and/or cropped versions of the original screenshot saved and uploaded as a seperate file. (Examples: 1, 2)

[esd]

And guess what? Unless someone is breaking the rules, that's exactly what they should have uploaded. If you've ever uploaded screenshots to the SSX website you'd know that there are two file entry boxes - THUMB and MAIN IMAGE. Both require the same filename, but one is expected to be 100x100 while the other is supposed to be the actual screenshot.

So, if there's a screenshot thumbnail that is in fact a big screenshot and not a thumbnail, being squished to fit the width and height fields of the <img tag then it's down to a user being a lazy git.

So, who was it? huh? huh? Own up so Bluey can slap ya!

[Inquisitor]

you can rant in general you know

[M.Steiner]

I always convert the thumbs i upload to 100x100 before i upload em, so i'm pretty sure it wasn't me, unless i made a mistake somewhere.

[SSX-Killjoy]

I had to force the size of thumb becuase someone who shall rename nameless **cough**Inq**cough** was too lazy to resize before uploading.

There are substantial difficulties in dealing with screenshots for a site. I chose to put the burden on the person uploading rather than trying to find some complicated scripting that I could use to magically make the image into a thumbnail. Not every screenshot fits nicely into a 100x100 square. And using gd to resize the image would end up in resulting in some very messy distortions. So, I was stuck with the problem.

So, I made it the uploader's problem.

For the most part, 95% of the screenshots are correctly uploaded (because I have gone through and shrunk many of them) but there are still some up there that need to be fix, and I have been busy too busy with other projects to worry about.

If someone knows of a better solution, I am all ears..

[BlueFlames]

I think that it would alleviate some confusion if the screenshot and thumbnail did not have to have the same filename. Then, your code would just need to move and rename the files, while the onus is still on the person uploading to resize the image.

Often times, when I'm preparing screenshots and thumbnails for my personal webspace, I name them [name].jpg and [name]-thumb.jpg (or something similar) rather than dumping thumbnails into another directory on my hard drive, that I'll just end up deleting later. I've got a feeling some newbie didn't realize he didn't need to make a seperate directory of his own for thumbnails, so he uploaded those 1900x1040 monsters twice.

That's a hypothesis, not an excuse, of course. I'll have to gut someone like a fish if this kind of behavior continues. :P

[Inquisitor]

Yah, I was wondering if those were my fault

[esd]

someone who shall rename nameless **cough**Inq**cough**

some newbie didn't realize he didn't need to make a seperate directory

those were my fault

Although I think KJ's work was very good, and is appreciated, this is one reason why I prefer Coppermine.

[SSX-Killjoy]

Future iterations of the CMS will allow for more differences. This was a quick fix and the same name was needed because of the generality of hte naming conventions used in the text based backend. As it is currently being updated into the database, it won't care any more. (As the object will just be a bunch of binary data.. no name required)

So.. On we forge ahead.. But Inq you weren't the only one that had done it.. But it was just more fun to give you a hard time as yours actually forced me to do something.. heheheh

[Inquisitor]

I strive to challenge my peers

[Syn]

On the other hand you may want to use a simple convention such as *filename*_thumb.jpg to differentiate the thumbs form the regular image. 'Course it still won't solve laziness on the part of some parties who shall remain named Inquisitor.