feature - autosize embedded photos

cornercarver

Someone on adv was bitching about folks using images that are too small in a ride report. I suugested that it ought to be possible to register a size preference with smugmug and then embed a generic URL which your servers will combine with the size preference to send back the correct image size. This would allow threads to be readable without horizontal scrolling regardless of individual monitor size. It would even be possible to store such a preference against individual referrer domains such that I could set Original to be my default size on dgrin but use Large or XL as my default size on advrider. I also suggested that it really needn't require a smugmug account, either, since a page which just plants a cookie for *.smugmug.com would be perfectly sufficient.

Just a thought, but I think it'd be useful

The one issue would be making sure you handle public caches correctly so that folks don't get the wrong image, but so long as you are aware of the problem, it is easy enough to handle

jfriend

FYI, Smugmug doesn't write the forum software used here. They buy/license it from someone else (see the bottom of any dgrin page for the company who provides the forum software - which is called vBulletin). So, Smugmug doesn't really control the features of the forum software (other than configuring features that already exist in the core software). To provide feedback to the people that do control the forum software, you'd have to contact Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.

cornercarver

jfriend wrote: »

FYI, Smugmug doesn't write the forum software used here. They buy/license it from someone else (see the bottom of any dgrin page for the company who provides the forum software - which is called vBulletin). So, Smugmug doesn't really control the features of the forum software (other than configuring features that already exist in the core software). To provide feedback to the people that do control the forum software, you'd have to contact Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.

My suggestion has nothing whatsoever to do with the forum software and everything to do with the software which is serving up images embedded from smugmug. Currently, if I embed an image in a forum post, I do so with a URL to a specific size of the image. This means that if I embed an XL image and someone is viewing on a small display or with a browser window that is not full screen, then they have to scroll around to see the entire image. It'd be far more useful if I could use a URL which was not size-specific and then have the smugmug servers serve up the correct size to each individual browser that requests it. I would set the default for each of my smugmug galleries, but anyone who has gone to smugmug's site and selected a different default size for smugmug images would get their preferred size instead.

jfriend

cornercarver wrote: »

My suggestion has nothing whatsoever to do with the forum software and everything to do with the software which is serving up images embedded from smugmug. Currently, if I embed an image in a forum post, I do so with a URL to a specific size of the image. This means that if I embed an XL image and someone is viewing on a small display or with a browser window that is not full screen, then they have to scroll around to see the entire image. It'd be far more useful if I could use a URL which was not size-specific and then have the smugmug servers serve up the correct size to each individual browser that requests it. I would set the default for each of my smugmug galleries, but anyone who has gone to smugmug's site and selected a different default size for smugmug images would get their preferred size instead.

It sounds like a nice idea - it just wouldn't work the way the forum embed images. They embed a link to an image and Smugmug's servers are not told anything about the size of the browser window that the image is destined for so they really wouldn't know what to do - they just get a request for an image and it's their job to return that image. The image could be embedded with flash or with javascript to make it smarter in order to get that info, but most forums don't make it easy or possible to embed things that way.