WordPress.org

1. Mark (podz)
   Support Maven
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Just recently I've ran across many blogs with what I'm sure the author thinks are image thumbnails. I have just timed one page at +60 seconds to load and I'm on a 512K line, yet each image was only about 200px square.

   The file size of some of these images though is ridiculous - anything from 150K + (One such small image was 450K)

   You might have tons of bandwidth, and you might have a T3 line and you might not see the effect because you use the cache, but believe me, visitors will just click away before bothering to read.

   Use REAL thumbs, don't just link directly to the main image and force it into a smaller size.

   /rant

2. Lorelle
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   In keeping with the theme of this forum, how about showing us a "proper" thumbnail to larger size link? We'd adore you for it!

3. Jinsan
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   60 seconds...that is quite bloody long. Fair point, perhaps the mass use of png and jpg2 will improve things?

   Shouldn't be too difficult to do thumbnails. Use any of the 100s of free thumbnail creators.

   the code would be something like:

   <a href="yourstite.com/images/theimage.png"><img src="yourstite.com/images/thumb_theimage.png" width="100" height="100" alt="this is a thumbnail" title="this is a thumbnail" /></a>

   There are many WP plugins that do the work for you as well, including IImage Gallery to name but one.

4. Lorelle
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Jinsan, it isn't about the method of compressing the file. It's about the size of the image file. Whether you have a jpg, jpg2, png or whatever, 500k is still 500k and it takes time for the QUANTITY to download. This isn't about image quality, it's about not understanding the process of images on web pages. Size matters.

   Thumbnails are lovely because they take up less space on the page, but people get lazy and just resize a 1 meg photograph so it looks like a thumbnail when the thing is actually the file size to show across two monitors. They need to show an actual size small thumbnail with a link, if people are inclined, to the larger version. This way, the user has a choice of waiting for ages to actually see a larger version of the picture instead of having the wait forced upon them.

5. Jinsan
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   @Lorelle - a matter of preference really - depends firstly on the audience, what your aim is, who the images are aimed at - quality DOES matter as does the format. Lossless vs lossy compression is also an important argument for images when used on sites. Take a 500k jpg image and you turn it into a 30k gif for example, and you have to lose a lot. Using better formats allows a user to retain to the quality without compromising filesize.

   There's a balance to be had between the two - to say that quality isn't important is not correct. At the same time, sense has to be applied on what a user visits, and what they see - I say sense, because the idea of common sense is simply a myth made up by some bored people.

   The purpose of new forms of jpg and the improvements in png24 are there to help improve the compression while retaining quality on images for website design. I do agree, however, it is silly to resize a huge file, rather than create a smaller version and create a link to the larger file should the user desire to view it.

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