JHouse wrote:
Try this new set of instructions:

http://roadstarclinic.com/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,187/func,view/id,87177/catid,14/

That is an excellent set of instructions, we really appreciate your writing them and making them available to the members of the clinic.

The mods have been tossing around some new rules for sigpics, in particular limiting any graphics to a height of 400 pixels. This is for the benefite of our members who are using lower resolution screens.

We will be finishing them up soon, but trying in this post to express our concern for sigs that are taking up a lot of real estate on our pages.

Just fyi...

Thanks

Thanks JHouse and everybody I think I Got it !!!

Gram wrote:
JHouse wrote:
Try this new set of instructions:

http://roadstarclinic.com/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,187/func,view/id,87177/catid,14/

That is an excellent set of instructions, we really appreciate your writing them and making them available to the members of the clinic.

The mods have been tossing around some new rules for sigpics, in particular limiting any graphics to a height of 400 pixels. This is for the benefite of our members who are using lower resolution screens.

We will be finishing them up soon, but trying in this post to express our concern for sigs that are taking up a lot of real estate on our pages.

Just fyi...

Thanks

I was sensitive to that issue, which is why I suggested that clickable thumbnail. It seems to give your server a break and give the user and viewer the benefit of immediate access to a highly detailed picture.

Though I can see how putting too many in your signature might defeat the purpose. Do you need us to limit the thumbnails to two or one?

JHouse wrote:
Though I can see how putting too many in your signature might defeat the purpose. Do you need us to limit the thumbnails to two or one?

We are working on 'guidance' as we speak.

Doc

JHouse wrote:
I was sensitive to that issue, which is why I suggested that clickable thumbnail. It seems to give your server a break and give the user and viewer the benifit of immediate access to a highly detailed picture.

Though I can see how putting too many in your signature might defeat the purpose. Do you need us to limit the thumbnails to two or one?

We could use your input

This is really not a server issue for us as the images are being served up directly from photo bucket. So we have zero impact at our server. I really like the idea of using graphics that are already thumbnails, it lowers the filesizes and can really decrease page load times for the users who are still on dial up.

That leaves two issues of concern, number of requests a user's browser has to make to load a page, and then of course the page real estate. The most important here in context of what you have already done being the real estate.

The number of requests a browser has to make is a slowing factor. It just means the browser has to make (in your case) three requests to photobucket's server. That is relatively low impact as they have very high speed servers that respond quickly, and you are using thumbnailws which can be served very quickly. In an extreme case (10 posts, three thumbnails each in the sigs) that would be thirty requests that had to be fulfilled from photobucket to render the page here on the clinic. Is it possible to create a composite of the three in one photo? I don't know what features photobucket offers, so really just asking on that one. Then potentially link the three as one photo back to an album instead of a single photo?

If this is not doable, the use of thumbnails certainly offsets the normal filesize we see around here for the larger pics. So this is fine tuning exercise more than anything else.

The real estate is a little bigger issue. The majority of our users are using 1024 X 768 screens. But we still have some users that are using 800x600. The clinic is really too big for those screens, but with patience they can navigate our pages. If we could find a way to align the thumbnails horizontally, that would considerably reduce the number of screens high some of our pages in the forum are. Is that possible with our tools here? I haven't tried, so again, just don't know.

You have put a lot of work into a very good solution for our members Jhouse. Your input on these questions would be really helpful.

Gram

I'm not nearly as savy about this as you may think.

On the first issue the real answer is "I don't know." Photobucket only gives you an address to copy. If you check more that one picture it just strings three together, giving you one combined link that contains all the selected thumbnails.

Until you explained differently in your question to me, I thought that the thumbnails themselves were files on your server that contained a hidden link. Kind of like that jumping rabbit one fellow has or some of the moving Avatar programs. I didn't realize it went to photobucket each time I posted to pick up each thumbnail. If that's the way it works, and having your server retrieve the clickable thumbnail in each post is consuming too many resources, then it would be better if we just posted a garden variety link to the picture we want to be viewable, and not have any pictures retrieved until someone wants to click on the link.

I tried to orient them horizontally, and couldn't figer out how to do it. It seems to be your software in the signature block that lists everything vertically, whether it is pictures, links or text. I have now experimented a little more and I can't see a way to string them horizontally.

We are at the ragged edge of my knowledge on this topic.

I just read the new Sig Pic Guidance thread. I'm not clear on whether my clickable thumbnail is legal. Is it?

You're OK with what you now have.

Doc

It is.

The guidelines are meant to govern total width x height, and filesize of the graphics used in pics.

Yours is well within the size parameters, and since you are using a thumbnail the file size is very small. Your tutorial helps folks understand how to use a thumbnail to link to a large higher resolution graphic without actually using the higher resolution graphic in the sig. That was very helpful.

The clickable part was not addressed as it has no impact on any of this.

Thanks for your assistance on this Joe. It was very valuable.

Gram

Happy to be of some service.

Once you learn to use photobucket, you can make a nice slide show or file of pictures and insert a plain old link in the signature too, if you really want everyone to see every detail (i.e. multiple pictures).