Text Wrapping

[daveleo]

I posted this question under "Off topic" but it never showed up on the HOME page, so I am moving it here, hoping that it can be read.

My question is: why do some threads here wrap the text and others do not? In fact there are some threads that wrap the text on one page but not on another page (in the same thread).

It is extremely annoying to have to scroll horizontally back and forth to read the text.

[135format]

its usually because someone has posted an image on that page which is wider than your screen dimensions can handle.

[daveleo]

Originally Posted by 135format

its usually because someone has posted an image on that page which is wider than your screen dimensions can handle.

yikes . . . how obvious.
thank you.

[Keith]

It's pretty annoying when people do this IMO and I have shot my mouth off about it in a couple of threads where it's happened ... then felt a little guilty!

[damien.murphy]

Originally Posted by Keith

It's pretty annoying when people do this IMO and I have shot my mouth off about it in a couple of threads where it's happened ... then felt a little guilty!

Yes, it really upsets the formatting of a thread, I find. I guess something like 800px wide max. would be reasonable, and imagine its not about the bandwidth for people, but readability.

[135format]

problem is because those images aren't usually hosted on RFF. They are hot linked from elsewhere. Now its easy for the VBulletin software to limit the image display size to some width and I expect there is a simple setting to do that. But what happens then is that the image is resized in your browser and usually that makes them look like crap. Not always but they won't look as good they should. Basically it gets downsized with no resampling and no sharpening as far as I'm aware (becaue thats the fastest way to do it on the fly by a browser.)

[daveleo]

Originally Posted by 135format

. . . . But what happens then is that the image is resized in your browser and usually that makes them look like crap. . . . .

possibly that would inspire people to resize pictures to 880max before posting their link ?
horizontal scrolling to read text is extremely annoying.


actuallt I just though now that simply adding width=800 to the IMG tag would force that to happen easily . . . I think

[135format]

Originally Posted by daveleo

possibly that would inspire people to resize pictures to 880max before posting their link ?
horizontal scrolling to read text is extremely annoying.

I doubt that since they make them that big so people can see them that big on the host they uploaded them to such as flickr etc.

However, since there aren't that many that do link to bigger images, then there would only be a few that don't display so well in VBulletin if a limit was applied. But thats upto the mods here. Raise it with them on the feedback page if you think its worth it. Many here have large high res monitors so don't experience the problem of wrapping but there are also a fair few who don't I suspect.

[135format]

Originally Posted by daveleo

possibly that would inspire people to resize pictures to 880max before posting their link ?
horizontal scrolling to read text is extremely annoying.


actuallt I just though now that simply adding width=800 to the IMG tag would force that to happen easily . . . I think

not quite so easy since that also expands images to that size for any smaller ones and THEY WILL look like crap, so there is some logic to be applied such as max-width and max-height. But as I said, I suspect VBulletin has setting for this although I can't be certain.

[damien.murphy]

Guess it comes down to posters, I imagine many people do not realise its an issue, and would probably restrict their images to smaller sizes if they did. After all Flickr, et al, all permit links to smaller sized versions of the images I imagine.

[135format]

Also people link to bigger images so that others can download and play with them. That simple ability would be compromised by limiting to a max size. There are other ways they could provide links but that would generate other complaints about the funtionality of RFF so there is no perfect way of doing it right now. Many struggle just to work out how to link to a flickr image let alone having to think about its size.

[rxmd]

Originally Posted by damien.murphy

Guess it comes down to posters, I imagine many people do not realise its an issue, and would probably restrict their images to smaller sizes if they did. After all Flickr, et al, all permit links to smaller sized versions of the images I imagine.

People are barely capable to link to Flickr images at all (we have special threads under "News" explaining drag-and-drop for that) and expecting them to link to smaller versions is probably stretching it. Nobody should generalize from themselves.

[daveleo]

Bumping this topic again.

Some folks are posting pictures at 1600 pixels wide !

Very ugly viewing if your on a netbook at the coffee house or on the train.

[t.s.k.]

Although images are the usual culprit, sometimes very long URLs can play havoc to the format as well.

[daveleo]

Call me a grumpy old man, but posting images at 1400X2000 pixels is simply rude, at best.

You know, spend 10 seconds and re-size you postings to 800px maximum ? ? Why is that hard ?