I know this will sound [:p], but seeing as how I’ve got to make all my pictures smaller, I nees to how to make the badges smaller. Can someone help me?
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y8/modelingmonkey/Image2.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y8/modelingmonkey/KoreanWarBadge.jpg
In his e-mail Jeff Herne said that they would be posting info on how to do this. Did you try the Community Assistance forum? Maybe there’s something on there.
have you got a photo program with a resize option, thats the only way i can think of
if you havnt the option (its normaly in the edit tab) maybe some one could do it for you
In response to the need to limit images I posted the following opinion:
http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=38709
Wow! What did you write? They won’t even let you into the thread!!
This is not a flame, just an opinion:
The original post was locked so I could not respond appropriately to the problem associated with limiting badge size. I feel it is a poor attempt to cater to the dial-up users. I feel that only the board will suffer and nobody will notice an “increase in speed”.
I do not think it is the badge size or signature size physically that is creating the “problem”. Even if you were to limit the file size (BYTES) of the signature you would NOT accomplish what you are setting out to do… “make it easier for the dial-up users”.
Even though dial-up users have the ability to compress images, or configure their browsers to withold images, the rest of us have to suffer the consequences… not very fair in my opinion, but life is not fair, oh well. The common internet browser will also “cache” the images so the signatures are not downloaded each instance of reading a post from the user. The proposed step of limiting file dimensions will not solve the problem compared to limiting the file size of the same image.
Keep in mind that a small image will always load slow if the host is slow and regardless of the file size or dimensions it will load only as fast as the server acting as the host. If FSM provides picture hosting then this would be a moot point as the images would be available at the same speed as the forum. Since pictures are being retrieved independantly of the forum, setting file dimmension limits does very little to speed things up for anyone, including the dial up users.
I guess the next step will be to limit the pictures posted on works in progress, or completed builds. Eventually you will notice the number of posts diminish along with many people’s interest in a “boring board” and I would HATE to see that happen!!! There are alternative ways to cater to dial-up users without affecting everyone and hopefully the FSM Staff will not ruin this wonderful forum for the rest of us!
Almost all image editing software has a resize or rescale functions. You can use such functions to accomplish your goal. Usually the size is given in pixel, inches, mm or just plain %. A good sized badge for this forum would have a height of about 60 to 100 pixels.
Hey Muzzle, as a cable modem user even I have noticed slow downs in loading time and at times have even been refused access because the server had been maxed out so I can just imagine what the dial up users must be experiencing. Perhaps you were not around when the site crashed completely this morning [:O]. In my opinion (and it is just that, an opinion only) anything that they can do to make the site more enjoyable to everyone is alright by me. I do not think that they are being unreasonable, a 330x200 image is plenty to show off your most recent build and add a few badges.
Sometimes a sites popularity can be it’s own downfall. The increased traffic means that there are going to be growing pains and yes smaller images WILL help out immensely. As for FSM hosting the pictures, well that is a whole new ball game requiring a massive amount of storage space on FSM servers. Any ideas of who would pay for that?
If they continue to experience these growing pains then limiting the size of build pictures may be next (remember this is just my opinion). in order to keep things sailing smoothly I suggest we all help out and conform to the standards they have set.
AFTER ALL… THEY ARE PROVIDING US WITH A FREE SERVICE WHICH COULD BE REMOVED AT ANYTIME AT THEIR OWN DISCRETION!!!
Well said razor. At the same time it reduces the ever increasing amount of scrolling we’ve been having to do here lately. I’ve been a part of many other forums where similar rules have been established. Heck some forums don’t even allow images due to the inability to control what people can post…not a problem here given were all a fairly level headed group of peeps here.
Here’s to signature compliance… [tup]…it’s a good thing.
I 'gree. If we want image hosting from FSM, then we’d need to be prepared to pay for it, something not many of us can do, due to the fact that we don’t live in the USA and don’t deal in $US. I still haven’t taken out a subsription to FSM for this very reason. And if FSM didn’t charge the users of the forum, they’d have to raise the FSM subscription price (in Australia, FSM is one of the most competetivly priced hobby mags on the shelves, cheaper than TMMI, MRI and many others), driving away their main (read only) source of income aside from advertisments. And if the advertisers see that no one is buying FSM anymore because of the increased price, then they’ll stop advertising. Then FSM dies and we’re left without this great source of knowledge. And I’d HATE to see that happen.
Cheers,
John
Ok. Here’s some help to resize images using paint shop pro 7 (my favourite), photshop 7 or paint (the one included in windows XP):
Using PaintShop pro: open the image (file → open) then select resize from the Image menu and select the size you want. The Mantain aspect ratio option prevents images from being deformed but won’t let you change both width and height at the same time.
Using Photoshop: open the image (file → open) go to the Image menu and select Image size. Set the pixel dimentions to the ones desired. The Constrain proportions options works equally to the mantain aspect ratio from paintshop pro.
Using Paint the main advantage here is that the program comes with WinXP. You may find it in your start menu, in the accessories submenu. The disadvantage is it resizes based on percentage, not actual size. Open the image, go to the Image menu and select Attributes, here you’ll see the size so use a calculator and do (65/width)x100, then (65/height)x100 and write both results. Close the attributes window ( press cancel) and select Stretch/Skew from the same Image menu. Then in the Strecth section enter the numbers you wrote down. If you want to mantain the aspect ratio use the smaller of those numbers in both, the vertical and horizontal, text fields.
Thanks steelsnail for getting us back on topic! [
]
The problem is that the images in the post are hosted somewhere OTHER than FSM. That can be the problem for the slowness if the post has images.
In layman’s terms… when you view a post you are downloading the text from FSM and the photos from wherever the image is hosted. For me it is my Comcast account and it is VERY fast for anyone within the USA but may be slow for anyone outside of the USA. There is no remedy for this except to exclude all images from all posts. That was the point I was trying to make.
The forum will automatically resize any image. If you have posted anything large it will automatically scale the image down. If the user clicks on the image it will load the full size image. Again, if the image is on a slow server there is no remedy to speed things up regardless of how small you make the image.
I was not trying to flame the FSM forum, I love this forum and don’t want to see something like “image restrictions” ruin a board.
When you look at the policy, they are also going to limit the number of badges you may display. Doesn’t that restrict people from joining builds if they are “close to their limit” or if they have already joined the maximum number of builds? Does that mean that eventually I will have to decide which badges to display?
To those people that respond with comments about the “cost” of the forum keep in mind that they sell advertising on this site to absorb the costs. Also, a hard drive is pennies per gigabyte nowadays, even for server class SCSI drives. If they charge a fee for the forum they would be nuts, even Minwax has a free forum for their wood stain products.
Again, if the image is on a slow host, the post will load slow. Maybe the web developers can simply port a “text only” forum for those with snail like connections.
If the policy is enacted I’m sure the posts will have links & links & links & links and everyone will be clicking all over the earth instead of viewing the images in the posts… oh well.
Thanks for not flaming me and honoring an opinion for what its worth! [:)]
Muzzle, Actually when the image is downloaded on to your browser/forum it is loading the full sized image but displaying it at the smaller size. The browser/forum does not automatically make the image size (bytes) smaller when it is downloaded. There was one guy awhile back who had an ENORMUS photo in his sig that took FOREVER to download (even with my cable modem) even though you ended up (eventually) with the typical scaled down pic. If you don’t beleive me I’d be happy to demonstrate [:-,].
And… you are not being limited to the # of Group Builds you can join but you will have to limit the # of badges. [|(] (you could always go to a 32x32 pixel badge then you could display up to 60 badges [:o)])
Anyway, my point was that we are being offered a wonderful service for free (w/advertising 'course) and if they’ve asked us for some cooperation they certainly deserve it because I for one would certainly like to see this forum continue.
Cheers
EDIT: Dang… [#offtopic] again!
Dwight, I know that you created the Elefant/Ferdinand badge, and I have the link on my favorites list. However, when I uploaded it to my host site (fotopic) through My Pictures it is now blank, so I’m actually posting it through your host site. Do you know how to move it to fotopic without losing the animation or if not, would you be able to resize it so that it conforms to the new rules. Thanks in advance, Pete
Folks, the premise of the guidelines is really quite simple…
330x200 allows you 15 group build badges…is anyone here involved in more than 15 group builds at once? I highly doubt it.
These guidelines were not written to cater to the dial-up users. In fact, I never even considered the dial up users when I wrote it. What we are trying to accomplish above all else, is to eliminate sig file images stacked 4 high and taking up the entire screen, forcing you to scroll. We’re not restricting you from posting images, as long as they fit into a 330 by 200 (roughly 2 inches by 3 1/3 inches) area. Since the average PC monitor is set to either 800x600 or 1024x768, a 72dpi image file has more than enough resolution for small image files. In fact, any image with 120 dpi or larger doesn’t improve the resolution of the image on the screen, it simply makes it larger. Larger, of course, equates to larger files, longer load times, and more impatient readers.
And yes, there are bandwidth issues. Website owners will testify that you not only pay for the amount of space you occupy, you also pay for the amount of data that crosses the wires…each time an image file is grabbed by our server and fed to your computer, the little cha-ching bell goes off. Even with a dedicated server, you’re paying for bandwidth, whether its a DSL line, cable, or T1 or T2.
I can probably produce hard numbers to substantiate performance loss over a curve since this forum went active. We never dreamt that 50,000 users would be registered and using our forums. Anytime you have that amount of data flowing back and forth, measures must be taken to insure the overall performance doesn’t drop below a certain level. While that’s not my particular job, I really don’t want the nice guys down in the IS Dept. to get mad because we’re clogging up the servers and making their lives miserable. I used to be a network engineer, and it’s no fun when you have to fix things that go boom-crash when you have thousands of people waiting on your efforts.
In essence, we’re not taking your car away, we’re just posting traffic signs…but the truth of the matter is that these guidelines are not going away. I personally don’t feel that asking our readers to be considerate of others by limiting their image sizes is too much to ask. Many successful forums restrict images altogether, which is something we’re not going to do provided we can maintain some semblence restraint in their usage.
Thanks for helping out!
Jeff Herne
Associate Editor, FineScale Modeler
If you’re a windows user, you can use the included Microsoft Paint program to resize images. It’s easy and quick.
I do find the limitation a good start, but one that probably will not have much effect. All they’ve done is reduced the total dimensions of a signature, so to an extent, yes it will help with load times when it comes to your browser resolving the incomming info. However, there are some factors I feel were not addressed:
File types. Due to the relatively small dimensions, I guess this isn’t really a big deal, but some file formats are much bigger than others.
Linking: I feel that most of the lag that happens in loading pages comes from the fact that people link to images on other sites for their signatures. That means for each image, the browser has a separate process thread that loads the image. This is where the slowdown happens I would guess. If finescale would allow, for example no more than 200kb of allowable signature space. THis space would be allocated to each user, and would be on the finescale.com domain, so loading would be reduced significantly.
We looked at this from several angles when we drafted these guidelines, and we wanted to keep things as simple as possible. Your points are valid, but what we’ve found is that the majority of the users are using JPEG files and not GIF or TIFF. We had also requested that folks consolidate their images into a single file, which will speed things up. Of course, some folks are linking to other servers for their badges and images, so they might not have the ability to resize and consolidate, but those who do, it helps.
Some folks will say that they’ve had no performance issues with the servers, which could be true depending upon your computer and connection. Others have expressed their concerns, and the biggest complaint is actually the overall size (dimensions) of people’s signature lines. The physical size limitation reduces the amount of screen space a single post will occupy, allowing more posts per page, and reducing the amount of scrolling the readers are required to do. A side effect of that is improved performance. It may not be noticable to the end user, but it’s already showing up in our performance numbers. Granted, it’s only numbers to the right of the decimal point, but if these guidelines can improve performance by 5-10%, I’ll be a happy camper! [:D]
Jeff
DITTO that’s what I was explaining the entire time, the chain is as strong as the weakest link and images are being hosted all around the world on various servers.
Yes, that would help improve performance, no arguments there. I know its been mentioned, but that decision is not made at my level, that’s made at the higher (highest) levels of the IS Department. It also has its downsides, as opening FTP services to the outside also has its share of risks, and it has to be monitored to insure that the images being uploaded are used for the intended puposes.
Unlike many of the websites and forums that are one-man operations, such as Hyperscale, ARC, Steelnavy, Armorama, etc., FineScale is a small part of a much larger parent, Kalmbach Publishing, which has teams of folks taking care of all the behind-the-scenes operations. The ultimate decisions are made by the parent company. We can obviously make recommendations that we hope will benefit everyone. Sometimes, they’re not popular, because we also have to take into consideration what’s best for the web community and the company as well.
Jeff