One of the most frequent comments on this site is "This thread is worthless without pics!". We love pictures. Pictures of your projects, tools, workshop, family, pets, lumber, NCWWer get-togethers etc. And preferably extra large in high resolution and full color.
The new software has some additional features to help with image sizes. You can find these in the User Control Panel under "Options", about halfway down. There are two things to select: How you want to handle image resizing, and what size pictures you want to see in the posts.
If you're happy with the way images work for you today, you don't have to do anything!
There are seven resize modes:
Keep original size: In this mode, images are displayed the exact size in which they were uploaded. There is no resizing. I only recommend this option if you have a very large monitor so you don't have to scroll back and forth all the time.
Enlarge in same window: This is the default option. Large images are shrunk down to a thumbnail size, and a yellow bar is added to the top of the image. Click on the yellow bar to expand the image. Click on the bar again to shrink it.
Open in same window: This works just like "Enlarge in same window", except that the image is shown all by itself in your current browser window. To see the post again, you have to click the back button
Open in new window: This works just like "Enlarge in same window", except that the image is shown all by itself in a new browser window. This means you can keep reading the post, but make sure you close all these new windows diligently or you'll end up with dozens of windows after 20 minutes of reading!
Highslide: This works just like "Enlarge in same window", except there is no yellow bar. When you hover over the image, the cursor changes to a magnifying glass. Click the image to expand it, and click it again to shrink it.
Floatbox/ Thickbox: These options are very similar. When you click on an image, it zooms in on the image and dims the rest of the browser window. There are controls to cycle through all the images in the post, which means you don't have to expand/ shrink each image individually. This can be very useful. Click the dimmed area (or click X or hit Escape) to close the image box.
My favorite is "Thickbox", it's fast and intuitive and makes it easy to cycle through the images. Second favorite is "Enlarge in same window"
The second item you can specify is the thumbnail setting. The default is 320x240. If a picture is larger than that, it will be shrunk down so it's no taller than 320 pixels and no wider than 240 pixels. You can then click on the image to enlarge it using one of the modes described above. You can change these settings. If you are using a small screen, you may want to shrink the images further (to say 160x120) so that they don't clutter up the posts.
You cannot make your thumbnails larger than 320x240 though. But, what you can do is set either of these values to 0, meaning the image won't be shrunk based on that dimension. So if I set my preferred width to 320 and height = 0, an image that's 200 x 14,000 pixels won't be resized.
Best of all: If you're happy with the way images work for you today, you don't have to do anything!
The new software has some additional features to help with image sizes. You can find these in the User Control Panel under "Options", about halfway down. There are two things to select: How you want to handle image resizing, and what size pictures you want to see in the posts.
If you're happy with the way images work for you today, you don't have to do anything!
There are seven resize modes:
Keep original size: In this mode, images are displayed the exact size in which they were uploaded. There is no resizing. I only recommend this option if you have a very large monitor so you don't have to scroll back and forth all the time.
Enlarge in same window: This is the default option. Large images are shrunk down to a thumbnail size, and a yellow bar is added to the top of the image. Click on the yellow bar to expand the image. Click on the bar again to shrink it.
Open in same window: This works just like "Enlarge in same window", except that the image is shown all by itself in your current browser window. To see the post again, you have to click the back button
Open in new window: This works just like "Enlarge in same window", except that the image is shown all by itself in a new browser window. This means you can keep reading the post, but make sure you close all these new windows diligently or you'll end up with dozens of windows after 20 minutes of reading!
Highslide: This works just like "Enlarge in same window", except there is no yellow bar. When you hover over the image, the cursor changes to a magnifying glass. Click the image to expand it, and click it again to shrink it.
Floatbox/ Thickbox: These options are very similar. When you click on an image, it zooms in on the image and dims the rest of the browser window. There are controls to cycle through all the images in the post, which means you don't have to expand/ shrink each image individually. This can be very useful. Click the dimmed area (or click X or hit Escape) to close the image box.
My favorite is "Thickbox", it's fast and intuitive and makes it easy to cycle through the images. Second favorite is "Enlarge in same window"
The second item you can specify is the thumbnail setting. The default is 320x240. If a picture is larger than that, it will be shrunk down so it's no taller than 320 pixels and no wider than 240 pixels. You can then click on the image to enlarge it using one of the modes described above. You can change these settings. If you are using a small screen, you may want to shrink the images further (to say 160x120) so that they don't clutter up the posts.
You cannot make your thumbnails larger than 320x240 though. But, what you can do is set either of these values to 0, meaning the image won't be shrunk based on that dimension. So if I set my preferred width to 320 and height = 0, an image that's 200 x 14,000 pixels won't be resized.
Best of all: If you're happy with the way images work for you today, you don't have to do anything!
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