First of all, sorry for not being here for a while, I was having fun in Vegas and I didn't want to pay $24 for ethernet to check in. Sorry

Anyway, now that I'm home, I finished my CJ update and posted it on Simtropolis, which, after leaving the USNW, is the only site I plan on posting on, because Simsports has sand in its gears as far as activity goes. Recently I have made all of my updates in HD, and told all of you to look at the update on USNW's site. But I've been out of USNW for two months, and I sort of just want to post my updates here again.

So with that said, I think we should change the rules up to allow larger pictures and let the forums resize them. Yes, it does take longer. But I think it's a good compromise that isn't as horrible as it sounds. It didn't take an eternity for USNW to load up a 20-picture entry with 1024 pixels wide snapshots. Hopefully we can agree on it

Thanks for considering, and we will probably put this to some kind of vote this week and after Mayorm comments on it.

800x600 is simply too small. Because of the size of monitors now days (mine being 1920x1200) it's just not necessary.

As a matter of fact, i don't even think a HEIGHT restriction is a good idea. The width restriction if you ask me should be something like 1024. Of course, the width restriction would be dependent on the actual width of the forums as far as theme goes and how much whitespace there is on the sides. There's hardly any whitespace on the sides. And there are forum mods to autoresize pictures if needed.

It doesn't take forever to load PNGs that around the size of 1280x1024. Even on a 1mbps connection. Plus, the quality of PNG is second to none. The quality of JPG is lousy. I have no idea if there's a rule restricting file type though

Great thought. I feel that it is certainly MUCH more convenient not to have to resize the images before uploading them. It is just plain difficult. The only thing I worry about is that with all of the people who put a lot of effort into having 40 images per update, it is going to take a long time to load all of them with an auto-resize over the whole page. We tried the auto-resize a while back, and it did take a while for the images to load when you had a whole lot of them on one page. Then again, the people looking at the CJs generally have time to scan through them, so people aren't in a rush.

Monitor sizes these days aren't small anymore. We just don't see too many people using 800x600 monitors, and the trend towards higher quality displays and faster connections is increasing. It is still pretty much the standard among internet sites today to limit the size of images to 800x600 and require JPEG files.


Just as a suggestion, I think that it is best just to run a poll to see how many people in the community still use small monitors or "extremely slow internet connections." We can watch technology trends on the news, but the only way to get a real idea is to run an actual poll of our members. If most people here have pretty much moved past the older technology, then I don't really see an issue bumping the image resolution limit slightly on the CJ board. It's just more convenient for all of us, and after all, who needs to stick to old standards with new technology, anyway? But if lots of people are using DSL, it would probably be best to give something like this a little more consideration before changing something like this. It could be inconvenient for people that already have trouble with 800x600 images.

These are my thoughts. -blakesterville

nah, don't need size restrictions really these days.

blakesterville wrote:Great thought. I feel that it is certainly MUCH more convenient not to have to resize the images before uploading them. It is just plain difficult. The only thing I worry about is that with all of the people who put a lot of effort into having 40 images per update, it is going to take a long time to load all of them with an auto-resize over the whole page.

I don't think I know anyone who posts 40 pictures an update. That's more trouble than it's worth. I'll agree with you on the autoresize being slow. But, again, it depends on connection speed and the picture itself. It also depends on the forum software itself.

blakesterville wrote:We tried the auto-resize a while back, and it did take a while for the images to load when you had a whole lot of them on one page. Then again, the people looking at the CJs generally have time to scan through them, so people aren't in a rush.

I still don't think people on dialup like waiting 30 seconds for the pictures to resize.

blakesterville wrote:Monitor sizes these days aren't small anymore. We just don't see too many people using 800x600 monitors, and the trend towards higher quality displays and faster connections is increasing. It is still pretty much the standard among internet sites today to limit the size of images to 800x600 and require JPEG files.

800x600 isn't the actual standard. Gaming forums lean more on pictures around 1024x768.. just because of the graphic details. Is my observation.

blakesterville wrote:Just as a suggestion, I think that it is best just to run a poll to see how many people in the community still use small monitors or "extremely slow internet connections." We can watch technology trends on the news, but the only way to get a real idea is to run an actual poll of our members.

Agreed. But more likely than not people aren't using .5 mbps connections on 1024-768 monitors.

blakesterville wrote:If most people here have pretty much moved past the older technology, then I don't really see an issue bumping the image resolution limit slightly on the CJ board. It's just more convenient for all of us, and after all, who needs to stick to old standards with new technology, anyway? But if lots of people are using DSL, it would probably be best to give something like this a little more consideration before changing something like this. It could be inconvenient for people that already have trouble with 800x600 images.

I have a very slow connection and it can handle 1440x780 uncompressed PNGs with image enhancing and vibrant graphics.. so it shouldn't an issue.

Wellin the early days of the forum we had somee huge pictures posted on the forums that were really anoying for me personally. Which is why I made the rule. I'm willing to give a little on the size restrictions, but I still want them in place.

I would certainly like to see the growth of the Developer Diaries and other pictures on the site with more freedom on image sizes. So with that said:

Voting is officially opened on this matter

By the way although the rules state that only JPegs are allowed, I have no problem with png images, I have even posted some pngs in my developer diaries before

Voted

I certainly want the height restriction lifted, to ease out problems for mosaic pictures

I think if it's one screenshot, it's OK to post. If it's stitched together (i.e. a mosaic) you should probably link to it or show a smaller version that links to the bigger one. If we did make a rule change I think that would work.

That's what I've done in my CJ and what I think most others should do

And I've voted.

By the way I think we have a pretty good majority of the members voting for the change

I really don't think height restrictions are necessary to begin with.. loading pictures that are tall may take longer to load but width wouldn't be a part of the calculation.. making viewing somewhat easier.

But for the sake of one page being excessively long.. k50's opinion on mosaics would be good just for that.