Pictures not loading

[Derek50]

I'm having a really annoying issue with the pictures. I have a good internet connection and pics from other sites will load no problem. It is taking a very long time to load a page that has a lot of pictures in it (ex. rig build thread or trip thread). And when it is finished loading, some of the pictures don't show up and some only load part of the way, leaving the rest of the picture as just a white space.

Is there a setting I can change to make this better? Is anyone else having this issue?

Thank you!

 

[nickburt]

Having similar issues, some of it may be the sheer size of the picture files.

 

[Derek50]

That's what I was thinking too, which is a huge bummer.

Having similar issues, some of it may be the sheer size of the picture files.

 

[Road]

Yes, I've made the suggestion that folks resize their images to a more reasonable size, like 500-600 pixels wide or so before uploading. It would save a ton of bandwidth (typical file size of 200kb each instead of multi MB), allow pages to load far faster, and look a hell of a lot better, too. So many people upload images directly from their phones, and nowadays phones take some huge file-sized images. Slows everything way down.

Gets kind of hard to read some threads with images as large as the browser window and if you click on those, they get even more gigantic. I've had some pic-heavy posts just never load, whether on my laptop or the app. Other times the app won't load it, but my laptop will. Frustrating. Gets worse when you're on the road and cell service is not as dependable.

I've also suggested that the site software--if possible and like so many other forums do--be set up to reduce the size of user-uploaded images and load a consistent size across the forums, with the giant image available if someone wants to click on the more reasonably sized post image.

 

[nickburt]

Yes, I've made the suggestion that folks resize their images to a more reasonable size, like 500-600 pixels wide or so before uploading. It would save a ton of bandwidth (typical file size of 200kb each instead of multi MB), allow pages to load far faster, and look a hell of a lot better, too. So many people upload images directly from their phones, and nowadays phones take some huge file-sized images. Slows everything way down.

Gets kind of hard to read some threads with images as large as the browser window and if you click on those, they get even more gigantic. I've had some pic-heavy posts just never load, whether on my laptop or the app. Other times the app won't load it, but my laptop will. Frustrating. Gets worse when you're on the road and cell service is not as dependable.

I've also suggested that the site software--if possible and like so many other forums do--be set up to reduce the size of user-uploaded images and load a consistent size across the forums, with the giant image available if someone wants to click on the more reasonably sized post image.

Surely there's a setting in the forum that will restrict the size of pictures posted, I know there is on a couple of forums I moderate on.

 

[Steve]

I've also suggested that the site software--if possible and like so many other forums do--be set up to reduce the size of user-uploaded images and load a consistent size across the forums, with the giant image available if someone wants to click on the more reasonably sized post image.

That's how it already works for me on Safari on Mac OS desktop. A thread opens and loads with the image fitting between the profile column on the left and the column on the right. The same size as the center column, or less if a small image. It only opens larger if I click on the banner that says to "click to see full size image" or some similar text.

I've seen forums where the size is restricted to small images 640 or less. That's fine for tablets and phones, and maybe for laptops, but on a 5k 27" monitor, a 500 pixel wide image would be less than 1/10 the width of my screen. I don't stay long on forums where I can't see the photos people post.

 

[Road]

That's how it already works for me on Safari on Mac OS desktop. A thread opens and loads with the image fitting between the profile column on the left and the column on the right. The same size as the center column, or less if a small image. It only opens larger if I click on the banner that says to "click to see full size image" or some similar text.

I've seen forums where the size is restricted to small images 640 or less. That's fine for tablets and phones, and maybe for laptops, but on a 5k 27" monitor, a 500 pixel wide image would be less than 1/10 the width of my screen. I don't stay long on forums where I can't see the photos people post.

Ahh yeah, I suppose so. It loads the same way for me, too, in Foxfire on my Macbook with hi-res, full-width between the columns, but can take so long at times I don't stay long. Even more that way on mobile devices; I give up without ever seeing the post or images.

Might be that going small, 640 or similar like older forums, is too small, but that there is a happy medium somewhere that will reduce load times.

My main point is that images straight from a phone, like most people are posting, sometimes several in a row, can each be 6 and 7MB easy and, for example with my phone, are 3024 x 4032 pixels. Resized for the forum, even at 900 pixels wide, reduces the file size to 272kb, a hell of a lot less strain on the page loading.

Here's one I just resized to 900 wide x 1200 tall. 272kb according to my file manager and took about ONE sec to upload to OB:



Looks like, at least on my Macbook screen and my res, in the OLB Dark Responsive theme, the available window for images is 1200 pixels.


Here's the original at 3024 w x 4032 t. 6.6 MB and took a full twenty seconds to upload to OB and, I imagine, takes much longer to load on most viewers screens, whether large or small.



Might be interesting to see server stats, or stats from something like google analytics or statcounter that shows percentages of browser type, screen res, javascript, etc used by OB viewers. When building sites, I used to always check that, then optimize my pages and images for the majority of people, not just for the type of system I was using myself.

I suspect it will slowly evolve into something more manageable over time for the majority of members. At least I hope that's the goal.

 

[Aussie571]

Ahh yeah, I suppose so. It loads the same way for me, too, in Foxfire on my Macbook with hi-res, full-width between the columns, but can take so long at times I don't stay long. Even more that way on mobile devices; I give up without ever seeing the post or images.

Might be that going small, 640 or similar like older forums, is too small, but that there is a happy medium somewhere that will reduce load times.

My main point is that images straight from a phone, like most people are posting, sometimes several in a row, can each be 6 and 7MB easy and, for example with my phone, are 3024 x 4032 pixels. Resized for the forum, even at 900 pixels wide, reduces the file size to 272kb, a hell of a lot less strain on the page loading.

Here's one I just resized to 900 wide x 1200 tall. 272kb according to my file manager and took about ONE sec to upload to OB:

View attachment 50533

Looks like, at least on my Macbook screen and my res, in the OLB Dark Responsive theme, the available window for images is 1200 pixels.


Here's the original at 3024 w x 4032 t. 6.6 MB and took a full twenty seconds to upload to OB and, I imagine, takes much longer to load on most viewers screens, whether large or small.

View attachment 50534

Might be interesting to see server stats, or stats from something like google analytics or statcounter that shows percentages of browser type, screen res, javascript, etc used by OB viewers. When building sites, I used to always check that, then optimize my pages and images for the majority of people, not just for the type of system I was using myself.

I suspect it will slowly evolve into something more manageable over time for the majority of members. At least I hope that's the goal.

Yes reducing the size of the photo will speed things up also the web processes pics that are 72 dpi quicker than one that is 150 or 300 dpi and some of these newer mobiles and tablets on the fine hi-quality settings will be up to 300 dpi.
Also OB Talk is a version of Tapatalk and has always had the odd hiccup or at least it has for me!

Sent from my SM-T580 using OB Talk mobile app

 

[Road]

Yes reducing the size of the photo will speed things up also the web processes pics that are 72 dpi quicker than one that is 150 or 300 dpi and some of these newer mobiles and tablets on the fine hi-quality settings will be up to 300 dpi.
Also OB Talk is a version of Tapatalk and has always had the odd hiccup or at least it has for me!

Sent from my SM-T580 using OB Talk mobile app

Yes, exactly - glad you bring up the resolution when resizing (actually ppi for online, dpi for printers) - I should have added that I always change it to 72 when resizing for the web. Been doing it out of habit for so long I forget I'm doing it.

 

[nickburt]

All this is fine, if everyone remembers to resize, which they don't. So by using the forum software to either restrict, or automatically resize, the need for posters to remember is taken away and the pages load more quickly.
Here on my 22" standard vga some take for ever, which results in me not bothering with some of them, especially the long posts with lots of pics. Which is a shame on two counts - 1, I don't wait to see what's been posted, - 2 the poster has wasted his time posting the pics, because some of us can't be bothered to wait for them to post.
Whilst there may be a huge amount of storage space available to OB, the forum speed needs to be controlled by forcing the picture file sizes down and kept in control.

 

[nickburt]

That's how it already works for me on Safari on Mac OS desktop. A thread opens and loads with the image fitting between the profile column on the left and the column on the right. The same size as the center column, or less if a small image. It only opens larger if I click on the banner that says to "click to see full size image" or some similar text.

I've seen forums where the size is restricted to small images 640 or less. That's fine for tablets and phones, and maybe for laptops, but on a 5k 27" monitor, a 500 pixel wide image would be less than 1/10 the width of my screen. I don't stay long on forums where I can't see the photos people post.

But, if someone has loaded the full size pic in the first place, then the full file size is used, irrespective of what your using to view the page.
Not all of us have 5K 27" monitors. That's reserved for photo and video editing on a pc that never goes on the internet.

 

[nickburt]

Ahh yeah, I suppose so. It loads the same way for me, too, in Foxfire on my Macbook with hi-res, full-width between the columns, but can take so long at times I don't stay long. Even more that way on mobile devices; I give up without ever seeing the post or images.

Might be that going small, 640 or similar like older forums, is too small, but that there is a happy medium somewhere that will reduce load times.

My main point is that images straight from a phone, like most people are posting, sometimes several in a row, can each be 6 and 7MB easy and, for example with my phone, are 3024 x 4032 pixels. Resized for the forum, even at 900 pixels wide, reduces the file size to 272kb, a hell of a lot less strain on the page loading.

Here's one I just resized to 900 wide x 1200 tall. 272kb according to my file manager and took about ONE sec to upload to OB:

View attachment 50533

Looks like, at least on my Macbook screen and my res, in the OLB Dark Responsive theme, the available window for images is 1200 pixels.


Here's the original at 3024 w x 4032 t. 6.6 MB and took a full twenty seconds to upload to OB and, I imagine, takes much longer to load on most viewers screens, whether large or small.

View attachment 50534

Might be interesting to see server stats, or stats from something like google analytics or statcounter that shows percentages of browser type, screen res, javascript, etc used by OB viewers. When building sites, I used to always check that, then optimize my pages and images for the majority of people, not just for the type of system I was using myself.

I suspect it will slowly evolve into something more manageable over time for the majority of members. At least I hope that's the goal.

These two pics are a good example to use. I'm looking at this on a 22" vga monitor (hooked up to a reasonably fast pc running Windows 7 Pro, which copes quite well with pictures on a lot of other forums). The first image scrolled quite well, the second was very slow and jerky, and is the sort of size picture that, when there's several to view, results in me leaving that page because it's not nice on the eyes.

 

[Derek50]

I'm using the computer at work now and while most of the pictures show up, it is taking a very long time. I'm also connected to an ethernet cable here and not wifi like at home. So it could be partly my internet isn't fast enough and the page just stops trying to download the pictures.

I think an automatic resize would be great! But also with the option to click it and see it in full size. The photos above that are the width of the column would be great but with some of the really nice looking trip photos, it'd be nice to see them in all of their glory.

 

[Aussie571]

Yes, exactly - glad you bring up the resolution when resizing (actually ppi for online, dpi for printers) - I should have added that I always change it to 72 when resizing for the web. Been doing it out of habit for so long I forget I'm doing it.

Yes me too most of the time!

Sent from my SM-T580 using OB Talk mobile app

 

[Steve]

But, if someone has loaded the full size pic in the first place, then the full file size is used, irrespective of what your using to view the page.

Nope, if i were to load a gigantic 5MB image, and viewed it on my desktop or laptop the image is only shown at reduced size unless clicked on.

 

[Road]

@Steve - Yes, and not to be argumentative--but to hopefully help this site work smoother and quicker--it displays it scaled to fit the available space, but is still actually 6.6MB and 3024x4032, which can then be viewed full size by clicking.

Right click and View Image Info for the above image and you'll see (at least on my Mac with Firefox): "3,024px × 4,032px (scaled to 1,235px × 1,647px)." If you right click/save the image shown as is in the scaled size to your desktop or elsewhere, then look at the properties of that saved image, you'll see it is actually still full size of 6.6 MB and 3024 x 4032.

Which means it appears smaller but is just as large a load on the servers both for storage and serving it back up to every viewer as if it displayed full size. It's not really a reduction in file size. Further compounded by if it's not cached on any individual's system, which more and more people do nowadays (auto-emptying cache upon closing a program), forcing the site to serve it fresh every time.

 

[nickburt]

Nope, if i were to load a gigantic 5MB image, and viewed it on my desktop or laptop the image is only shown at reduced size unless clicked on.

Maybe so, but as @Road says, the file size is still full size, it's just the way viewing is handled. In the database, the images are the file sizes that were uploaded.

I've just downloaded the two images, one of them is only 266kb, the other is 6448kb. Hence why file size management is needed: a) to speed up viewing, b) save on storage space.
All forums have settings that either automatically set the max file size for images (not documents), or stops a poster from posting without resizing first.

 

[Steve]

Oh, I know that the file is uploaded full size. I thought you meant that a full size image is shown full size, no matter how it is viewed. We were apparently not talking the same thing.