To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (Full Version)

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tarheel -> To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 3:49:36)

Can I get a consensus? What, as a surfer, would you rather see;

1) A photo page with many photos thumbnailed? or...

2) A photo page with full-sized photos that you just let load a view.

Go Here and tell me what your reaction is to my layout. http://www.yosemitefun.com/tarheel/images/pictures_of_yosemite.htm

Thumbnail or not?

Thanks!

Phil

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"
http://www.1awebhosting.com
1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



PBailey -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 5:54:28)

Hi Phil,
It will be interesting to see what the concensus is.

I think it might depend on the type of site. On a gallery site I put up to share pictures I thumbnailed because there could end up being a lot of pictures and everyone would not be interested in all of them. However, the pictures on your Yosemite site are so wonderful I think it would take away to thumbnail. You note it loads slow. The pictures are worth waiting for.

Paula

 



Mike54 -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 5:55:28)

Hi Phil,

Personally I would go with thumbnails. It took well over a minute and a half for the page to load completely.

Great pics by the way.

ah reckon, tharfo'e ah's, ah reckon.




abbeyvet -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 6:49:00)

I would go with thumbnails, based on my generally much slower than 56k connection. It is not a clear cut opinion though because thos are such fantastic images but after 3 minutes only about a third of them had loaded for me and it is just too slow.

What I would normally do with thumbnailed images on a site such as this, in light of my slow connection, is right click and open the initial thumbnails in a new window so that the original page was loading away as I viewed them.

What I might consider if I had those fantastic images is splitting them onto about 10 pages, making an initial page with just one or two images and an explanation of what was to come and then preload the large images for the next page at the bottom of each page. They might not all have time to load in some cases but it would speed things up a fair bit as my guess is that people will linger quite a long time at each page because the images are so wonderful. Doing it that way you might get away without thumbnails at all.

Katherine

++++++++++++++++++++++++
www.inkkdesign.com

"Dogs have owners, cats have staff"
Meeeooow!



LB -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 10:22:40)

Ditto. Full size, but more pages. When I was on my slow connection (24k) and viewing your photo page, most of the photos would X out and I couldn't right click for "show picture". Reloading wouldn't help, as they again wouldn't all load.

Beautiful photos... it would be a shame to not be able to load them all.

Linda



tdg -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 11:23:08)

Hi:

Just my opinion... I'm currently developing an FP built site, which will contain a rather large image gallery. I've given the question a considerable bit of thought and I decided to travel the thumbnail route. Much cleaner design wise and much quicker to load...IMHO. Let your audience be the final arbiter of which images they chose to view.

Good luck with your project in any case .

Tom G, Sr.





Kimberly S. Schwartz -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 20:02:58)

Phil,

I am the world's most impatient surfer, and I generally prefer thumbnails, but honestly these shots are so awesome that I didn't mind waiting for them to load.

I AM one of those people with a 56K dialup (all we've got out here in the styx), but I didn't get impatient viewing your site.

Beautiful work....

Cheers,

Kimberly (daughter of a Tarheel)




john40004 -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/26/2002 21:05:58)

Hi Phil,
I have a personal website which includes pictures of my home and family. A portion of the website also includes a section as to alumni which includes almost 40 pages as to pictures and reunions. This section includes almost 1,300 alumni and has received almost 8,000 hits in the past six months.

I use thumbnails as to the pictures. I judge the loading time based on my current 28.8 Kbps with a 56K modem (Microsoft XP with IE 6.0) The main thing I've found with my website over the past four years is that people like an initial fast load. Many of them are also on cable-modem or DSL so their load time is much faster than mine. My response has been that they like the initial fast load with the option to click on the thumbs with a larger picture as an option.

Please keep in mind that I'm not a professional as to website development. The great thing about this forum is that many of the responses you will receive are from those who are.

John

 



Paula -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 0:49:16)

I think I'd leave it as is. It loads pretty slow, but for me I was so caught up in looking at each picture and reading the captions that I didn't mind. I might have been a little hesitant to go to another page, but as it is by the time I got through admiring each picture the next one had loaded. Truely majestic. I've never given a lot of thought to going to Yosemite... until now. Thanks for sharing.

Paula
The more I learn the less I seem to know.



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 1:54:35)

thanks all! I like the idea of putting up a separate page with thunbnails and giving people a chioce. It wouldn't be difficult as all.

And yes, I do explain that it loads slow, but the pics seem to load from the top which allows people to view and read the captions while others are loading. My only concern is the propensity for IE to stop loading pics if there are many images to load. it just puts an "x" in the cell on about 1/3 of the total. If I hit refresh, they finish loading. Kind of a frustrating phenomenon.

Hmm...

Keep 'em coming....

Phil

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"<BR><A HREF="http://216.74.88.250/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.1awebhosting.com</A> <BR>1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 1:58:34)

quote:

Truely majestic. I've never given a lot of thought to going to Yosemite... until now. Thanks for sharing.

Paula
The more I learn the less I seem to know.


Paula,

Thanks for the kind words; you'd never forget it if you came out. I had a family from Atlanta come out last June; we had dinner, met their daughter... They sent me some NC barbecue sauce... :-)

Phil

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"<BR><A HREF="http://216.74.88.250/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.1awebhosting.com</A> <BR>1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 2:01:14)

testing

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?" http://1awebhosting.com 1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 2:03:22)

testing

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"
http://1awebhosting.com
1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



Kokomo -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 9:21:42)

I vote for thumbnails with links to full size (at least 800 x 600) photos. I'm a huge Yosemite fan and a consummate Windows wallpaper collector and I'm itching to see your photos full-size on my screen. They are totally stunning. Wonderful job on the site.



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 9:55:42)

quote:

They are totally stunning. Wonderful job on the site.


Thanks! It seems to be a 50-50 split. And that's kind of what I'm paranoid about, is giving people a view of a picture 750 pixels wide and getting it stolen... There's not a whole lot you can do with a 400 pixels-wide image compressed to 50%, so I'm not terribly concerned with that...

Yosemite fan? You from around here?

Phil

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"
http://1awebhosting.com
1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



Kokomo -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 10:15:41)

Nope, not from around there, but my family used to camp and backpack in Yosemite quite a bit when I was a youngun'. Mostly in the Tuolumne Meadows area. I haven't been back in a very long time, but I'm still in love with the place!




Kokomo -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 10:18:51)

Just for the record, my wallpaper collection obsession is for personal use only, though I understand your concern about your beautiful images being stolen. I know there's a way to digitally watermark photos to help protect your copyrights but I don't know anything about it.




LB -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 11:01:53)

If you do a search at Google for digital watermark there's lots of info on them. A screensaver would be a great idea... put a visual watermark of 'www.yosemitefun.com' on it?



joy -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 12:21:15)

You really have some amazing photos! It almost seems that tiny thumbnails wouldn't do them justice. Typically, if I come across a page full of 100px thumbnails, I'll only click on one or two. It would have been a shame in this case - they're all so awesome.

One more idea for you - you could always split the difference and use larger than average thumbnails - around 250px. This would cut the photos (and load time) roughly in half, and that's big enough that you'll still be able to see the photos in the thumbs pretty well.

MyDog8it Design
The Bankruptcy Site



traveler98 -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 16:42:42)

I agree with Joy above. I have a fast connection and still had to wait. In my mind with the A.D.D. like mentality of most surfers, warning or not people will click off.

Larger than normal thumbnails seems a decent compromise




ritarun -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/27/2002 17:07:35)

Thanks for sharing these wonderful photos!!!
I would wait for the loading time cause I like photos like these.

 



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/28/2002 1:48:05)

Thanks all! I've learned a lot...

Phil

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"
http://1awebhosting.com
1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



Bluey Zee -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/28/2002 6:40:40)

Phil,

Here's my 3.9c worth (that's with tonight's exchange rate) to help tip the scales in favour of full size. Those photos are way too beautiful to hide as thumbnails.

Your home page took about 2-3 mins to load (IE5 & W2K) but it was worth the wait. I reckon abbeyvet's approach sounds good!

Cheers

 



Bill Nicol -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/28/2002 10:25:44)

I am definitely with Katherine on this one. Pictures are fab.

Bìλλ Ñìçøλ
Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.....



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (2/28/2002 13:59:22)

quote:

Your home page took about 2-3 mins to load (IE5 & W2K) but it was worth the wait. I reckon abbeyvet's approach sounds good!

Cheers


2 to 3 minutes? Can you give me some idea about your connection? Sometimes the net gets bottlenecked, but it shouldn't take that long. I recently re-designed the entire page to simplify the tables, and eliminate some garbage code, and it was loading quick for me... Yes, I cleared my cache, etc. etc.

Thanks! and thanks for the kind words...

Phil

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"
http://1awebhosting.com
1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



Bluey Zee -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (3/1/2002 7:25:25)

Phil,

Last night's connection (with IE5 & W2K) was running at approx 40Kbps.
As luck would have it, I upgraded today to XP & IE6 and any graphics intensive pages like yours run like a dog . I use Internet Turbo 2001 and will be loading the upgrade tonight so will have a look at the site and give you the progressive load times.

Nevertheless, when I looked at it last night the load time I mentioned was for every image. The page was very usable in that the text at the top and the first few images loaded sub 15 seconds and by the time I had read and gazed, most of the rest had loaded so it was no real drama.
Katherines solution still seems like the best bet and no way, repeat no way should you reduce them to thumbnails - it would be impossible to do them justice and undoubtedly a lot of them would get skipped over and missed.

Keep up the good work on a great site.

Cheers

 



tarheel -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (3/1/2002 13:56:36)

Thanks, Bluey.

I'm interested in your Turbo 2001; what is that? Plus, why would your download time be affected by changing to XP and IE 6, both of which I use, and have noticed no change in performance.

Thanks
for the kind words, too!

Phil

"If God is not a Tar Heel, then why are hyperlinks default-colored Carolina blue?"
http://1awebhosting.com
1A Web Hosting for Frontpage.



stevebxl -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (3/1/2002 14:06:12)

Great pictures and boy... did it bring back memories! I was a busboy right out of high school in 1970 and I worked at the Yosemire Lodge when it was a cafeteria. I spent a year there before I joined the military and it truely was the best year of my life:)

Oh yeah... I would prefer thumbnails or seperate the pics with more pages AND could you change the font color to a white so old guys like me could read it against the black back ground? HA!




Bluey Zee -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (3/1/2002 17:44:54)

Phil,

I upgraded to Internet Turbo 2002 last night and boy, did I get some mixed results on your site.
Bottom line is that after much checking and mixing and matching I definitely got better results with my old system (IE5 & W2K). Moving to IE6 & XP (no Turbo loaded at this time) had strange results on lots of pages eg. the text seems to load real fast then the graphics follow along behind giving an illusion that things were really quick however total load time didn't change noticeably which makes sense. Don't know if they've done something to IE6 to make it do this but it would be possible I guess.
However, in the case of your page with its large graphics load, things definitely went backwards eg. from 2-3 minutes to 6 minutes. Loading Turbo 2002 brought it back to 5m 25s. I will e-mail you the results which might give you a clue as to what images are the real blockers.

Nonetheless, even though the load time on a nominal 56Kbps (but actually 40Kbps) connection is long, as I said in my last post, there is certainly plenty of material for the viewer to go on with.

I installed Internet Turbo to keep my connection live with it's auto ping because the ISP kept dropping it after 20 minutes. It certainly has a positive effect on performance on a dial-up but as to where specifically it's a bit hard to determine particularly until I get used to this new config of mine.
If your interested have a look at [url]www.clasys.com[/url]

Cheers

 



john40004 -> RE: To thumbnail or not to thumbnail... (3/2/2002 12:35:19)

Looked at your site with XP and IE 6.0. Speed of 28.8 on 56K modem.

Truly beautiful pictures.

Load time was 5 minutes 20 seconds at which point IE timed-out and all images from "Timed exposure of the tunnel from the Tunnel View parking lot" to the bottom of the page did not load. Based on the right-hand scroll bar, I was less than half-way down the page. Status bar also showed 40+ images left to load.

Tarheel, such beautiful pictures yet most people would never see them due to either impatience or load time.

I'd definitely recommend multiple pages. One thing to consider with thumbnails is that you won't have the ability to control the backgound color. I personally think your pictures would lose much of their impact if viewed with a white background.

Hope this helps - John

 



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