The large original picture was only 628px × 426px, which fits fine. It's not just a matter of bandwidth on my end too much, but having the picture fit in the space without running off the screen. Besides, they're usually resized a bit automatically to fit the board here anyway, so it's a waste to post really big... we won't see it bigger.
The most typical monitors & screens used on the internet are only 600-800 pixels high... if you include all the laptops, & portables, like tablets or phones visiting. When you include that most browsers have a tool bar, address/search bars, tab bar, etc. at the top & bottom, they only have about 550-750 pixels left in height for online content & images. So it makes no sense to make an image larger than could fit most people's screen.
Some people, even some web designers use 1080 to over 1900 pixel tall monitors for their internet, work, & web design. The problem with that is a 600 pixel image looks really tiny on their monitors 1080-1900 pixel tall minitors. They're actually seeing the web, images, & text much smaller that an average user. Because everybody screams 1080p or more for HDTV, they don't even realize they're using the wrong resolution for what most of the web is designed for & how most people view the web. The web standard is 768p tall resolution. That's because 720p TVs actually use 768p panels, & most have them double as monitors.
More than half the people in the world get their internet on a portable device, like phone, tablet, or laptop with a screen only 320-800 pixels tall. And the ones on 320p portables far outnumber those with a 600 or more pixel tall screens (held horizontally).
So as TV screens get bigger, what people are surfing on has reversed... they're smaller again, because they want potable or pocket devices. The lower resolutions they require also save on their monthly wireless data bill.
Smart web designers will try to design their pages to look good from at least 600-800p to fit the resolutions of most popular portables & laptops. In recent tests, cnet displayed the same images, content & movies on 48-inch screens to people sitting 6 feet away. Some of the monitors were 720p & others were 1080p. At that distance, the test subjects couldn't tell which screens were 720p or 1080p.
So unless one is sitting really up close to a real big screen, or using a huge home theater screen, using 1080p or higher for web use is a moot useless point. And because it makes most pages & images look smaller than they were designed, it can actually make their experience worse.
Another problem, that wasn't so much of a problem 10 or more years ago, is unreasonably large image file sizes. People are using high bandwidth "lossless" compression jpgs, pngs, gifs, or other files without knowing what that means. Lossless is good for images used on billboards, or for making copies or copies of copies, or as their master print images for copies, but not for the final image displayed on the media. Too much modern software, hardware & cameras have their default settings set to lossless, & the user doesn't change them, or have a clue how, or by how much they should change them.
It's not only about saving server bandwidth, but your user's bandwidth & resources. As a courtesy to your users, you shouldn't unnecessarily overload their connection, browser, hardware, & CPU by viewing your oversized content, or jack up their monthly data bill. This used to be common web courtesy, but has long been forgotten by many.
I see single pages take up 1/4 GB of RAM on nothing spectacular, that could have easily used only 1-5mb to look exactly the same.
Of course, places like Facebook, Yahoo news, CNN, & ABC use a lot of your resources in data mining, spyware, ads, & adware too. But most overloaded 200-500mb sites are just poorly designed by people with no clue about compression, or how to use it properly. They just used "out of the box" website design & imagine software with default settings, without any idea what they're doing.
I find saving things with free irfanview in jpg with a quality setting of 75 makes a much smaller file size, with absolutely no change in the image quality. I use other stuff. But Irfanview is by far the easiest to use for the average person, free, & doesn't have other odd stuff hidden in the software or installation.
It used to be quite common politeness that almost nobody posted images anywhere over 50-75kb in size. People have just forgotten how, or given up the will to try. They think just because they have the space, resources, & bandwidth to handle their large files over the web, everybody should have enough to handle the over-sized content.
And it spiraling way out of control these days. I'm stumbling on 600x400 pictures at 3-8mb in size, or people are posting what looks like a blurry phone or VHS tape picture at 4600x2300 pixels in size. If it looks like a fuzzy 480x240 quality picture, why the hell would they blow it out to 10 times its normal size? Do they actually think that will make it better?
A blurry picture only gets blurrier the more you blow it up. If it's already poor quality, distorted, or pixelated, increasing the quality settings more is only going to bring out those distortions more, & make it look worse. I guess if some people given enough buttons to push, they will push them all with absolutely no idea what they're doing.
Then some will read 1 or 2 sentences at some pro-camera/graphics page, & think they know everything without reading the whole article. Besides, the rules they use for pro-processing an image taken on a $2,000 camera with a $700 lens do not apply to blurry pix taken of your ass with your phone's $5 camera with a plastic 1/8-inch lens, & 1/4 watt LED flash, or processing an image taken by a $10 pocket camera in 1975.
Big dumb media & web companies make a lot of the same mistakes too. Just because the CEO, & their head designers have unlimited lightning speed web connections, on massive octa-core computers, with outlandish amounts of RAM, storage space, with massive 4000x1900 screens they think that everybody does or should. They've lost sight of what their target audience would most likely be using & viewing the content on.
Here at Betty's for instance. Here's the typical profile of an average user at Bettys:
During the daytime in their time zone from breakfast time to after dinner time, they're most likely visiting us on a phone or small tablet with a 320p-600p screen. Unless they're near a free wifi spot, they're most likely visiting on their portable's data plan, paying by the GB per month for usage. You're talking $30-$50 per month for only 3-5gb of bandwidth usage. And those free wifi hotspots they may or may not be able to get online with, may be almost as slow as a dialup connection. That's because they're not the only one in the area using that spot. Or the wifi spot deliberately limits the speed to prevent people from doing much more than just simple surfing or reading & checking mail on their system.
About prime-time evenings in our user's time zone, they may get on their bigger laptop or PC on their home connection visiting Betty's. That screen is usually a 720p TV running at 768p or a 768p monitor. If they stay up late way past their bedtime, they're back on their small portable or phone visiting Betty's.
In rural areas & other countries, they may have to pay by the GB for their home connection too. Or they can be almost as slow as a dialup connection. Some data connections vary in speed by the hour or day too. Even in my big city, during peak times, people on "fast" data connections report speeds dropping below dialup performance during peak times or if they're some distance from a mobile tower.
Some people don't even have their own personal private computer, but have to share one with others in the house. Or they have no computer at all at home. So the only way they can visit Betty's privately is on their own portable device, on their limited data plans.
We're serving over 60 movies or TV shows, 12,000 pictures, & over 200 hours of music, with about 11,000 hits per day to Betty's. So it's not all about bandwidth on our end, but of our typical user's resources & convenience. And most of those movies we run use up less bandwidth than visiting Facebook, Yahoo's news page, CNN, or ABC. We also deliver of an average of 40 minutes of music in under 5mb of space & bandwidth.
Topic: Hello (Read 4471 times)
