Screenshot width

[TMcIver]

I remember some discussion a while ago about the way the forum does width limit for different res screens. I'm running at 1680x1050 and can never view the screenshots in full. I get a scroll bar and can only see about half at a time. Maybe I'm just doing something stupid or need to change some setting? I would love to be looking at the screenshot previews in all there glory.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Tim.

[Quinn]

Well, its comforting for me to see that I am not the only one then - I have to have my screen set at 1280 x 1024 just so these tired ol' eyes can actually see the text these days

Half page screenshots = fact of life on this forum - dont have a problem on others - strange? ???

[Iain Emms]

Yes i also run 1680x1050 which is my resolution of my 22" monitor to put up screen shots mostely you have to down size the shot before posting.

[Guest Aussieman]

Would be nice if this forum could introduce a standard screenshot size of 1024 x 768 or even 800 x 600. Especially when people post something like 20 shots in one posting and you have to get to the last one before youu can scroll across to see the rest of the shot.

But as usual my suggestion got laughed out the door. Maybe one of these days the admins might see the virtue of smaller screenies. Not holding my breath though.

Cheers

Pat

[John Venema]

In this day and age of high resolution monitors, I don't see virtue in 800x600 postage stamp sized screenshots, sorry Pat.

All official Orbx preview shots are 1160x700 which should fit fine on most monitors. I understand there may be some people still using 1024x768 screens, but I stopped using that resolution oh, about 6 years ago or more? These days a cheap 1280x1024 LCD monitor can be had for less than $100, sometimes much cheaper than that.

The vast majority of screenshots on this forum are perfectly fine for viewing, and those that are larger I still appreciate being posted because if they are truly special they deserve to be right-clicked and saved in my local image folder. That said, if a particular forum user consistently posts huge sized screenshots, Wolter usually asks them to resize them down a tad.

[TMcIver]

Thanks for the replies. But there does seem to be some problem (which could well be mine and nothing to do with the forum itself) but when I look at the screen shots I'm not seeing them at 1160x700. If I download them and look at the in Photo viewer they appear at that res and are great. But by default in the forum they appear way way bigger. The YMML beta shots appear at at least double that res. So on my 1680x1050 I can only see about a third of the shot without scrolling. If I download it, it fits wonderfully on my screen. There must a be a setting somewhere, maybe even in Vista? Could Vista be magnifying everything? Maybe I'll go and see if theres something in that...

EDIT: Okay, now I'm getting somewhere. At some point I'd used the logitech zoom function my mouse to zoom so that the text was a good size, this does seem to have altered the size of all the screen shots as well. So if I zoom back out the screenshots are wonderful and viewable again. The text however ends up small and not all that readable, okay readable but not ideal. I'll keep doing some fiddling and see if I can work out how to zoom the text without zooming the shots. I feel like this did change at some point when one of the mods changed some setting, but I could be wrong about that.

[Maurice_King]

Any of my shots are 800 wide BUT are URL linked to the FULL SIZE unit  3840 X 1024

[Quinn]

In this day and age of high resolution monitors, I don't see virtue in 800x600 postage stamp sized screenshots, sorry Pat.

All official Orbx preview shots are 1160x700 which should fit fine on most monitors. I understand there may be some people still using 1024x768 screens, but I stopped using that resolution oh, about 6 years ago or more? These days a cheap 1280x1024 LCD monitor can be had for less than $100, sometimes much cheaper than that.

The vast majority of screenshots on this forum are perfectly fine for viewing, and those that are larger I still appreciate being posted because if they are truly special they deserve to be right-clicked and saved in my local image folder. That said, if a particular forum user consistently posts huge sized screenshots, Wolter usually asks them to resize them down a tad.

Sorry John - but I dont think that I am totally stupid

I have reasonable 19inch monitor running at 1280 x 960 and even at full screen there is always a problem as mentioned above whereby the screenshots are "off the page" and it is quite annoying to have to scroll to the bottom to access the scroll bar in order to "see" the rest of the shot, especially when there are more than one or two and often as many as 10

There is also the banner at the top that also is "off screen"

Now, I agree that all the screenshots deserve to be shown in at least some glory but it should also fit on a screen that is 1280 pixels wide

Example #1

Example #2

[Wolter van der Spoel]

What is the problem of posting up a piccie at 800x600 and then link it to the ful size one, wich ever size that is

as an example I mostly try and do it like this and add a link to the fullsize on the bottom of the screenshot :

=> fullsize screenshot

the code for above screenie would look like this:

[*img]http://www.*******/******/fled/CC_191/cc191_003a.jpg[*/img]

[*url=http://www.*******/******/fled/CC_191/cc191_003.jpg]=> fullsize screenshot[*/url]

you'll have to upload the fullsize one and the reduced size one ......

BUT, the option is also present to set "Autoresize images" in your browser, then they won't get of the screen,

in case of IE7 goto:

Tools

Internet Options

and under the "Advanced" Tab tick the box "enable automatic image resizing"

hit apply, OK and then close the file and shut down the browser,

return to the webpage you where viewing again and now all images should be resized to fit the screen.

if all is well you should need to do this action only once

I assume that a similar option should also be available with FireFox, but I do not know that as I don't use that

hope this helps a bit

[Iain Emms]

IS it ok to use clickale thumb nails like i have in the past?

[Wolter van der Spoel]

rgr Iain,

no probs

[Iain Emms]

Thank you for the quick answer on that one, i find it easier to use clickable thumbnails then people can see the full image i use image venue to host my shots.

[Quinn]

What is the problem of posting up a piccie at 800x600 and then link it to the ful size one, wich ever size that is

No problem at all Wolter - I suppose that I just over reacted to the condescending tone used when quite obviously there is a problem that is not just confined to a couple of GOF's

Facts are facts and a piccie is worth a thousand words

[Guest Aussieman]

Sorry John - but I dont think that I am totally stupid

Well said George. It is something similar to what I wanted to say but was afraid to do so. My monitor is a 19" LCD running at its default resolution of 1280 x 1024.

I know this may step on some people's toes but I realise there are people on these forums who update their monitors on a regular basis and can claim them on their tax returns.

But there is also the other end of the spectrum where people like you and me who are pensioners (unable to survive on $273 a week) who are using monitors that are as old as 10 years.

Wolter's Idea is great. An 800 x 600 screenie with a link to a full size screenie.

Cheers

Pat

[solareagle]

I will also comment that this is the only forum that I know of that forces the user to scroll an individual post over.  Most forums extended the post horizontally so the whole image is visible, so there is no need to manually scroll the post, instead one just scrolls the browser has a whole.  Flight Sim World for example has the ussual implimentation where the post extends to the right as far as is needed for the given image size.  I do run at 1280, yet I still have to scroll to see all of the Orbx previews.  Again this is the only forum I've seen that behaves in this way. I'm persoanlly not interested in an image size resriction, as I will no longer post if my 960 width is not allowed, as I post images at several places, and making a special set for here is not practical, though I would like to see the forum expand posts to the right as FSW does.

[solareagle]

And to mention a work around, what you can do it click the image, and then use the left and right arrrow keys to scroll, that way you do not have to go to the bottom of the post to scroll, and you can scroll back and forth while actually looking at the image in questions.

[maxter]

What is the problem of posting up a piccie at 800x600 and then link it to the ful size one, wich ever size that is

No problem at all Wolter - I suppose that I just over reacted to the condescending tone used when quite obviously there is a problem that is not just confined to a couple of GOF's

Facts are facts and a piccie is worth a thousand words

Well actually the FACT that you are using a browser that either does not auto resize or you have not got it turned on seems to be a pretty good reason to pull your head in first and work out what the problem is before you go getting all uppity and start making snarky remarks cob...

As mentioned above, it's not a problem for "most" and I don't see why most have to change their ways to accommodate the few when there is an obviously simple work around available.

Cheers,

[John Venema]

Fair and sensible arguments gents; I did not realise it affected 1280 screens. You have an interim solution using Wolter's browser resize trick, and I will ask Jay to look into how the forum can better accomodate screenshots ok?  Apologies if I appeared to be flippant about it, I do take all feedback on board so we'll act on this now ok?

[Heiko Glatthorn]

I also didn't realize that the forum software doesn't span the shots for 1280 res. Like Solar mentioned, that's not at a problem f.e. at FSW. But i also like to add that it won't happen that a 10 year old hardware with actually 17" resolution will dictate anything - game or internet related today. Don't get me wrong, i don't want to sound harsh but that's fact.

John, if it is not possible to make the forum software showing 1160 pics in one piece at 1280 res, we might have to reduce to 1000. I don't have a problem with this size.

Btw - like Solareagle i also post the pics at different sites - to create different resolutions is simply to time intensive.

Hope we find a solution which makes everybody happy  !

[wantok]

I assume that a similar option should also be available with FireFox, but I do not know that as I don't use that

I use Firefox in preference to IE (though I've recently been trying Google Chrome out... very nice indeed - might adopt it as my main browser).

There are add-ons for Firefox to do this (e.g. "Image Zoom" - click any image to have it resize to your browser dimensions, etc etc), and add-ons to do many other nice image-related tricks.  Also, without add-ons, you can right-click any image to Open in New Tab, and by default it will be resized to your browser width (click the image to pop to full size).

Note that auto-resizing within browsers tends to be lower quality than a real image-editor resize... for that reason it might be best, especially when we're demonstrating the kind of visual richness that we see with FTX, to use properly produced 800x600 images in-forum, linked to higher res images.

[Jay Kae]

I have set the forums to 800x600 maximum, if you wish to show people your original just link it to the full size screenie from now on

[Heiko Glatthorn]

I have set the forums to 800x600 maximum, if you wish to show people your original just link it to the full size screenie from now on

What exactly does this mean ? 800 for picture width ? Or does a 1000 res picture span now across the whole screen ?

[John Venema]

Er, Jay ... not the solution I was looking for mate, hehe!

We're not going to restrict images to 800x600, that's too severe a move. We'll continue to investigate.

In the meantime, can Pat or Quinn please confirm that their browser resize option works for them?

[Jay Kae]

Restored to normal, I know what you are saying here Koorby but the way the forum software works, it might not be a possibility

[John Venema]

Restored to normal, I know what you are saying here Koorby but the way the forum software works, it might not be a possibility

Ok mate, I think users may need to rely on their browser's ability to scale images then.

[Penzoil3]

What is the problem of posting up a piccie at 800x600 and then link it to the ful size one, wich ever size that is

No problem at all Wolter - I suppose that I just over reacted to the condescending tone used when quite obviously there is a problem that is not just confined to a couple of GOF's

Facts are facts and a piccie is worth a thousand words

Well actually the FACT that you are using a browser that either does not auto resize or you have not got it turned on seems to be a pretty good reason to pull your head in first and work out what the problem is before you go getting all uppity and start making snarky remarks cob...

As mentioned above, it's not a problem for "most" and I don't see why most have to change their ways to accommodate the few when there is an obviously simple work around available.

Cheers,

At his age, and physical circumstances, Quinn can get " snarky" any damn time he wants, kid. Didn't your Mama teach you to respect your elders ?

  Not Laughing at all;

    Sue

[Jay Kae]

Uhmm Sue... Wolter and Quinn are about the same age

[John Venema]

Hi Sue,

Many of us are aware of Quinn's circumstances and his condition, and we of course have genuine empathy. However, even Quinny himself knows that's not a license for him to be an a***hole and he fully expects the same moderation that everyone else gets.

[Quinn]

Hi Sue,

Many of us are aware of Quinn's circumstances and his condition, and we of course have genuine empathy. However, even Quinny himself knows that's not a license for him to be an a***hole and he fully expects the same moderation that everyone else gets.

Hehehe - I was going to reply and point out that I am quite capable of fighting my own battles John, you just beat me to it - thanks for the thought though Sue

Anyway getting back to the actual discussion in hand - I actually tried the same page with BOTH IE 6 (I think I said 7 on the photo comment) and Firefox 2 - they each produced slightly different results as can be seen by the screenshots but both still had the problem of having to scroll the pic - I have also searched both of them (the browsers) for an auto resize function and I am damned if I can see one (that is not to say that I wont be shot down in flames on that point)

As to the workarounds - the arrow keys dont work on my setup for firefox (my preferred browser) but do in IE so that could be an answer for some other users - just not me

Since at least one person has indicated that resizing to a different size for this forum alone is not an option for him I had a quick look through shots that he had posted - same type of problem but to a much lesser degree - the other point is that since that particular person generally only posts a small number of shots in the same post then I personally would not really bother all that much (no disrespect intended as to the attractiveness or otherwise) - the main problem as I perceive it is when there are large numbers of pictures that I might actually like to have a good close look at - for instance some "sales" type shots that might induce me to spend money on a product - to have to continually scroll the browser all the way to the bottom and then the side scroll and back again etc etc - I think you get the point

As to Maxters invitation for me to pull my head in - well I would suggest that he actually re-read the whole thread again and realise that it was not me that started all this - I was just the bunny that gave a graphical illustration of the problem that more than one person obviously has - IF I was still trying to use a 17 in screen at 800 x 600 then I would just have kept my big mouth shut but since I am using what was a $1,000 19 in monitor at 1280 x 960 and am obviously not the only one left in the world with this antiquated resolution then it bears at least thinking about a solution other than telling people "if you dont like it ............."

Perhaps the easy answer in the short term might be for the "Official Orbx" screenshots to be posted in 800 x 600 with a clickable option to the full size picture as per Wolters very detailed option - at least they are the ones that I personally like to look closely at and find monumentally agravating having to run up and down the screen - therefore I have just reached the stage of not bothering - I wonder if I am an orphan?

[John Venema]

Quinny, sort of confused here - didn't you just get a PC hardware upgrade with a new 19" LCD - those should support a much higher resolution than 1280x960 surely? Have you tried changing your screen resolution from the desktop?

[Martin Lott]

G'day Quinn, I'm using a 19" monitor at work and using firefox. When I want to view the full image without scrolling I simply right click on the image and click "view image". It re-sizes the image to fill the screen. Hit the backspace key or the back button in the browser to close the image window.

[wantok]

I actually tried the same page with BOTH IE 6 (I think I said 7 on the photo comment) and Firefox 2 - they each produced slightly different results as can be seen by the screenshots but both still had the problem of having to scroll the pic - I have also searched both of them (the browsers) for an auto resize function and I am damned if I can see one

G'day Quinn,

Try this: In Firefox, take a look at the Image Zoom add-on.  Install it, restart Firefox.

When you come across an image that is too big for your browser window, just hold down right mouse button and left-click, and the image will be resized to fit.  Hold down right button and middle-click, and you're back to the original page.  Alternatively, just right click to get the Image Zoom menu, from which you can zoom the image to fit the page or to other sizes. Here's the Image Zoom add-on website with more details.

I haven't used it much myself.  There are plenty of other add-ons like this, if this one's not to your taste.

As buzzm mentions, the standard View Image option in Firefox works well too - depends on whether you prefer hitting Back or using the mouse combination, really.  You may find the add-on is a bit faster to use.... YMMV.

[Guest Aussieman]

Listen you lot, George did not start this thread but it appears that like me (I am the same age as George) he has a slight problem with eyesight and needs to run his monitor at a lower resolution in order to be able to read the posts.

I also understand George's health problem as it killed my father 40 years ago and he was only 56. Every day I watched his frustration at not being able to do the simplest of things as quickly as he would have liked to. Walk 5 paces then spend 5 minutes with his hands on kis knees getting his breath back. In those days there was no such thing as portable oxygen bottles, only full sized ones so they were always kept beside his bed.

Having said that, George do what I am going to do in future .... any threads that contain large screenies will be marked as read.

One other thing that has been forgotten in this debate is the fact that some people are on restricted downloads with their ISP and if someone posts 10 or 15 screenies many megabytes of thier d/l capability is used up. Alot of people are still on dialup and this slows the loading time for pictures as well.

At 800 x 600 the pictures load quickly even on dialup. So let's be sensible, set the size to 800 x 600 and make them clichable for those who want to see them in a larger size.

So until this happens, no more screenie viewing on Orbx by this dude.

Cheers

Pat

[John Venema]

One other thing that has been forgotten in this debate is the fact that some people are on restricted downloads with their ISP and if someone posts 10 or 15 screenies many megabytes of thier d/l capability is used up. Alot of people are still on dialup and this slows the loading time for pictures as well.

Are you on dial-up Pat?

I posted 14 shots at 1160x700 resolution in a topic yesterday, for a total of 1.74MB of data. Most dial-up ISP plans actuall have unlimited data, but 4-hour timeouts, which is not an issue with download resumers. Do downloading 1.74MB on dial-up is not instantaneous - agreed, but it also does not take an age. In the bad old days when I only had dial-up access I simply turned "view images" off in my browser since viewing lots of graphical data did not make sense. If I really wanted to view something back then, I would right click the image icon and view it manually.

But it's a moot point. Right now, we are not restricting resolution to 800x600 but offering tips on how to auto-scale using various browsers, either with native tools built into the browsers or simple plug-ins. You can have your 800x600 cake and eat it too Pat, just use a little ingenuity mate

[Quinn]

No need to be confused John - the new machine is still being "put together" - I am trying hard to not make the same mistakes with it as every other time whereby being in a rush created the proverbial dogs breakfast - I did actually briefly connect it (with its 1920 x 1200 resolution 28in) and there was not a problem - but since the OP and others raised the point whilst apparently using 19in 1280 screens (which you implied we should all have anyway) I continued what I was illustrating as there are still a lot around and they are potentially your target market - not the bleeding edge dedicated gamer alone as that is too small a target considering they are probably more into "shoot-em-ups"

From what I have seen on various other forums the fair proportion of Flight Simmers is the baby boomer brigade (or at least family men) that have discovered something to amuse themselves with in their later years and whilst a fair proportion of them are upgrading their machines, they are somewhat like me and loath to connect their latest acquisition to the net and letting their "old" machine remain their primary browser machine - just MHO

I will of course stand clear for the rush of dissent

Oops - I started this post some time back and did not check new comers

Taking the point about dialup - there is a fair to middling chance that I may be forced back to dialup when my struggling ISP goes under as I have used my govt subsidy and there is no way will I be able to afford the fees that the puddle charges

That being said - if the eventual solution stays that large files stay then I suspect that I will just go back to what I did before - just not visit the screenshots area the same way I have used adblock to remove all traces of banners, signatures, avatars etc to conserve my download allowance

have unlimited data, but 4-hour timeouts, which is not an issue with download resumers

I would also like to point out that to someone on a pension 30 phone connects a month is actually quite noticeable (including my pensioner discount on the line rental - I try and keep the bill under $25) without having to re-connect because of the time taken to download heaps of graphics - that is why I never even saw any screenshots till relatively recently

Anyway as Pat again pointed out - it was not either of us that started this - we are just the bunnys that spoke up - how many others are experiencing the same frustration? - and voting with their fingers? - lost sales opportunities perhaps? - frustration can definitely p*** people off

[solareagle]

Not to beat a dead horse, as it seems the forum software here does not support the functionality, but I wanted to give a clear example of how other forums handle wide images.

You can see that for one thing it reduces the width of the avatar column on wide images, as well as extending the post with the wide image to the right, so there is no need to scroll the post.  You can see the browser scroll bar at the bottom, but not a scroll bar for the indivuals posts.

This shot shows a 1280 desktop resolution with a 960 image and an 1152 image.  The way the 1152 image is accomodated is very nice, and allows me to view 1152 in one piece.

[maxter]

At his age, and physical circumstances, Quinn can get " snarky" any damn time he wants, kid. Didn't your Mama teach you to respect your elders ?

Not Laughing at all;

Sue

Just came across this so here goes...

I respect people for what they do and not how old they are or what they wear, that's what my long departed "mama" taught me... I have no idea of Quinn's physical condition or age and have no desire to find out, however irrespective of either position there is a standard to uphold within these boards lest we become the rabble that is places like AvSim etc... 

I will leave the rest of the commentary to the mods.  If you want to take it further PM me please.