I just don’t understand why having them embedded instead of linked is better overall. As it now stands, anyone can click and view any picture they wish. If they were embedded, those with slower machines and/or those who just don’t wish to see every single picture will have to change their personal settings to “no view”, then go back into their settings to “view” see one they choose to see, then back again to their personal settings to change it back to “no view”. This would be better and/or easier?
The hell with newfangled ideas like that, sonny! Why, in my day, we would get along perfectly using smoke signals and semaphore flags!
On another board I frequent that uses vbulletin, if I disable images in my settings then any embedded images appear in posts as clickable text links to the image.
So by simply changing a setting, you would see links where i see images. We could have our cake and eat it, too.
Because there would be no larger data transfer for the board’s server whatsoever.
The way it’s done now, someone posts a url of an image and the board displays that url as a link so that people reading the post can click on it to view the image. The image is then transmitted to the reader’s browser from that 3rd-party website - the SDMB never transmits the data for the image.
If images were displayed by default, the same thing happens. The SDMB doesn’t have to transmit the image at all - it gets loaded to the viewer’s browser *from that third party website. * The only difference is that it wouldn’t be necessary for the viewer to click on the image link in order to view the image.
The SDMB servers transmit exactly the same amount of data in either scenario – just the url – which amounts to the same trivial amount of text either way. The people who are worried about their SDMB browsing experience being slowed/bogged down by lots of images are concerned about the extra amount of processing that *their own *computers/phones and internet-connections would have to do if images were displayed by default. But then, if they were concerned about that, they could choose to disable automatic image viewing in their own “User CP” settings on the board, and they could still have an image-free experience where they could still choose to click on image links only when they want to see the linked image.
There really is very little, if any, effective difference. In either scenario, those who always want to see images by default already have ways to do so, and those who only want to see images when they click on a link would always have a way to do so, even if images were displayed by the board by default. And in neither case would this tax the SDMB servers’ resources.
You might think I’m arguing in favor of the proposed change, but I’m not. True, I don’t care much, but I would prefer to see things just stay how they are, since the nature of the board does put more emphasis on words and thoughts, and the current default seems to fit that nicely.
It would just be nice if everyone understood the mechanics of it in order to have a fully informed opinion. Once you understand those mechanics, you can see it’s just a simple matter of style and preference - technical concerns don’t really enter into it.
I’m all for it. We enabled polls and it didn’t ruin the board. If it turns it to a clusterfuck it can always be turned off.
I don’t know what is so hard about clicking the link to an image. Often it is more convenient, because the image loads in separate window which you can arrange to view alongside the text of the post.
The SDMB is not perfect, but a lack of images, avatars, and cutting-edge forum software “features” is not the reason why.
voltaire, are you assuming images would never be stored within a thread?
Or pool! And then our young men’ll be a’ fritterin’ and we’ll have trouble!
:smack: I’m not assuming anything - I’m telling you as a matter of fact that images would never be stored within a thread. It just doesn’t work that way.
Just like if you go to a really old thread and click on the link to an image, you’ll often find that the link is dead and no longer brings up an image. That’s because the 3rd-party website that used to host that image either deleted/moved it, or the 3rd-party website itself no longer exists. At no time was that image stored in the SDMB thread or anywhere else on the SDMB servers, only the url pointing to it was.
If images were displayed by default, NOTHING about how or where the image is stored/hosted would change. The only thing that would change is whether or not you had to click on an image to view it, or if the images appeared in the thread without the need to click a link. And even in that case, individual users could still choose to make one simple setting change to their User CP settings so that they’d have to click on the link to images instead of them just showing up in the thread automatically.
I don’t care, but I would go fot it provided that:
a) They’re off by default
b) They don’t slow the servers.