An end to the picture scrollbar -- help, please! (Absolutely GCA-related)

[Phil McDade]

"Ugh, old picture threads are tough to look at since the horrid, 'anti-feature' scrollbars were added, so I shrunk all the pics down to a size that doesn't make you want to go bonkers."

-- Scott Burroughs, March 19, 2010, "Photos of Riverfront, VA (A 'Doak Less Discussed')" thread

Reviewing some recent photo threads, I came across this comment from Scott, whose aerial threads were partly the cause of my addiction to this site.

It's been, what, almost two years since the re-design of this site -- eons in the realm of software design. The scrollbar feature for pictures continues to be a plague on this house. As I've said before, photo width on this site ought to be an absolute first priority when it comes to threads. While I admire Scott's efforts to downsize his photos, I think it detracts from the intent of such photo threads, which are collectively one of this site's great treasures.

The wisdom of GCA's regular participants is one of the reasons I keep checking back on this site. Any suggestions out there, specifically as it relates to a solution to this ill-suited redesign effort? Does anyone else care? If not, I'll shut up, shrug my shoulders, and assume either everyone's OK with it, or that no practical solutions are available. I refuse to believe either is the case.

[Scott_Burroughs]

Phil,

Obviously you didn't see this post of mine from yesterday (I didn't resize any pics physically):

Nothing you can do

Michael,

As long as you've been on this site and you don't know that this is NOT true?  Of course there is something you (and everyone) can do to fix it, and it's extremely easy, and it doesn't involve re-sizing your pics (which is, of course, another option).

Just add " width=800" inside the first [img] as so: [img width=800] and voila!, your pic is 800 pixels wide, the max width allowed before scroll bars start being added.  The height is automatically resized in proportion to the width.

[Joe Bausch]

I would prefer Ben/Ran set the width limit before the scrollbars kicks in at 1600 or something.  I think most people have monitors with the resolution to handle that.

Regarding using the 'width=800' command:  it does work well, but I prefer to resize my pics to 800 pixels wide to minimize the load on my web server. 

[Phil McDade]

Scott:

I am of the view that re-sizing is not in the best interest of the overall goal, which is to restore width to pictures in photo threads. With today's nearly uniform wider computer screens, it seems illogical to truncate picture sizes -- I've seen some on photo threads that occupy (maybe) one-third of the width of my screen, which seems silly.

[Jon Nolan]

Good points Phil.  Conventional UI wisdom says fixed width designs are better and generally that's a true statement.  In the case of this site I'd say making use of the real estate available is totally justified.  It's an easy change to be honest.  On the DG pages change...

#widthControl {
    margin:0 auto;
    padding:0;
    width:992px;
}

to...

#widthControl {
    margin:0 auto;
    padding:0;
    width:100%;
}

It's that easy.  Those of you who know how to use Firebug can make that change on the fly and give it a whirl.  If it is determined not to cause problems the change is a two minute fix for someone with access to the CSS. 

Possibly over-simplifying in that consideration must be made for the non-DG pages and a max-width setting of somewhere near 1600px is probably in order to avoid a very goofy looking site when viewed on monitors set to extremely high resolutions.  But still, unless there's a good reason beyond conforming to some notion of "web standards" with the 1024-centric styling I think it's worth considering.

My $.02 for $.00.  During office hours that would be at least $50.   

[Gary Slatter]

not sure if it's related - A former CEO of IBM told me that at his first AGM at Augusta one of the Members actuall ystood up and suggested "improvements" in the locker room, one of his guests had "noticed".  In the fall when the Member returned to the club, he noted the improvements and when he opened his locker, he found the bill, with a note "thanking him for his recommendations"

[Bradley Anderson]

Every time I try to post a picture it says they are too big. And then when I resize them below 300 MB they loose resolution and they are so small its hardly worth posting them.

[Ulrich Mayring]

Nothing against widescreen images, but the text becomes very hard to read at that width. So text and pictures should actually have different widths.

Ulrich