Sorry about that.
I never thought there would be a difference on a search page like google, but i was obviously weong.
I won’t do that again.
I think the SDMB also tends to be a more old-school crowd. Elsewhere on the web, people aren’t really that surprised if you’re on a mobile device. Here it’s like “YOU YOUNGINS AND YOUR FINGER SCREENS, OF COURSE YOU CAN’T USE GOOGLE! Cursed nimwits with their eyepads thinking the world has to change for them. Real computers have keys and filesystems… grumble grumble image upload… just draw the pixels yourself… hmph”
It’s not that mobile devices are surprising; it’s just that full computers are still more common and are the default.
It would be the same if someone asked a software question and then, only after a dozen replies, did they add, “oh BTW I’m on Mac.”
In any case, even if you are using the most popular platform (Windows on desktop) you should still post the OS in the thread, if only to help future searchers find it more easily.
End of lecture.
Ah, then you haven’t noticed that they added a feature. Instead of typing in the box, you can drag an image from another browser window to the box and then they will search for pages that image is on, other sizes of that image, and images it thinks are “similar”.
That “similar” think is iffy: sometimes it has other images of the same subject in the same clothes, sometimes it has people in similar poses, and sometimes it must be matching the portions that are light and dark or someting, because I can’t see the similarity.
But if I am trying to find the page I downloaded an image from years ago, or find pictures related to a pic I downloaded (which might be on the same page as it somewhere), it is pretty handy.
I found the easiest way to use an image on my hard-drive was just to open it with my browser and drag-and-drop.
I was only being half-serious, and it’s always a good idea to specify your device and OS, but in terms of actual penetration, I don’t think PCs have been that common for a few years.
The specifics probably depend on website (with the SDMB probably being more PC heavy), but I believe in general smartphones have outpaced dedicated computers. It is no longer the case, on an average website, where you should assume most of your visitors are on a PC.
With Google, for example, it’s used more often on a smartphone than PCs (slide 22 of this report). That trend’s only been increasing and will probably get even more biased in the coming years.
Just thought it’s worth pointing out that the SDMB is quite a bit more old school in many respects: demographics (last time we had a survey), technology (still using an old vBulletin and relying on Tapatalk for mobile), and arguably, in opinions and perceptions.
I’m not sure you’re interpreting that graph correctly: The percentages don’t sum to 100%, which implies that some data points are in multiple categories. It might be the percentage of the population that has each of those devices, for instance, in which case the correct fact would be that “more people have phones than have computers”. That wouldn’t imply, though, that more web browsing is done on phones than on computers (especially since many phones can’t browse the Web at all).
We covered that in Post #10.
I actually often do the “type in the URL” version. (Well, technically, I drag the image up to the search box in my browser, which pastes the URL). I am taken to a page that does a search on the URL, but I am also asked if I would like to do an image-based search instead.
I understand not offering image search directly on mobile, as the whole filesystem concept is different, and drag and drop is not really used on them. But I see no reason that they should have disallowed pasting in a URL.
If your browser is Chrome, you can use an extension that lets you just right-click on an online image and choose “Search Google for this image.” There may be similar options for Firefox and IE.