Images upload option. Honestly, I do not want to offend anyone, just to know.

[Weaver]

Personally I dont like the full-sized pics in posts as I don't like to have to keep scrolling the page sideways to see them, especially where multiple pics are posted in one reply -- I save the pics & look at them offline later.

I agree, which is why I started using the 640x480 upload option in Photobucket a while ago: you don't lose much quailty, but they fit on the screen without scrolling.

I think I'm right in saying that it depends on how big your screen is though - am I right?

This is 640x480. Can you see it without scrolling? Does it download fast enough? (If the answer's no, I'll remove it so it doesn't screw this thread up for you:

[Hobbes]

640x480 fits on almost any screen without scrolling.

[beowulf]

This is 640x480.

lol...my prefered size for the same reasons 

[ChernayaAkula]

640x480 fits on almost any screen without scrolling.

Yeah, no kidding. Even with the names, avatar and such portion on the left and the border on the right, there should be ample place without the need to scroll sideways.

From THIS ARTICLE on Wikipedia:

Resolution -------------- % of Internet Users

Higher than 1024×768 -------- 85.1%
1024×768 -------------------- 13.8%
800×600 ---------------------- 0.6%
Lower than 800×600 ------------ 0%
Unknown ---------------------- 0.5%

Note: These statistics were gathered from visitors to a website dedicated to web technologies, so there may be an over-representation of both higher resolution monitors and lower resolution handheld devices. Updated to January 2010 results.

Going by this table (with the caveat), pics with a width of 800 pixels (factoring in names and borders) should be viewable to 98.9% of users without the need to scroll sideways to see a complete pic. Even pics with a width of 1024 pixels should be no problem for 85 %.
I use a fairly large screen with a native resolution of 1920x1200.

[philp]

This is slightly off topic but one thing that does bug me and when people quote an image from a previous thread.  Then you have to see the same thing sometimes several times.  If you are going to quote something that has a pic, deleted the pic from your post.  If you really want to reference it because you really like it just say "Really like your profile of the Tasmanian F-16."

Sorry, rant off.  Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

[kitnut617]

I'm going to buck the trend here and go with uploading straight to here.  I frequent four, sometimes five, other forums and a couple of them have the direct upload feature and the others don't. I tend not to post any pics on the forums where you can't directly upload because I find going through a third party to post a pic to be a pain in the proverbial --

IIRC, the ATF forum which has the direct upload, also has an automatic feature where it down-sizes photos that are too big for posting, thus eleviating the hassle sometimes encountered here with photo size.

[kitbasher]

I only very occasionally attach photos to a post.  Mostly I upload to Photobucket and then add the link to that.  Either way, I always reduce the image size to either 3" or (usually) 3.5" wide, retaining the height and width ratio.  I think 3" (might be 2.5", don't recall which) allows for 2 pictures to be fitted side by side.  I do that way simply because I find it more intuitive than adjusting the resolution, which I'm sure others find the easiest method for them..
philp makes a good point about 'picture quoting' (which I think I'm guilty of, M'lud).  Yes, make comments by all means, feel free to hyperlink as well - but if repeating a picture causes capacity problems then it's best not done.

[GTX]

profile of the Tasmanian F-16

Where???   Sorry back to normal programming.

[raafif]

that pic is good 93% on screen without scrolling which is quite acceptable -- I just hate when its only 15% see-able without scolling  
Why can't we get more nice art of light-civil stuff like that ?

profile of the Tasmanian F-16

Where???  Sorry back to normal programming.

I done a Tassie Viggen -- they only had one as the TDF relied on another country (Oz) to defend them.

[Weaver]

that pic is good 93% on screen without scrolling which is quite acceptable -- I just hate when its only 15% see-able without scolling  
Why can't we get more nice art of light-civil stuff like that ?

That light-civil is light-military: it's a Fairchild AT-46A: abortive attempt at replacing the T-37:

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,32159.0/highlight,t-46.html

[Thiel]

I prefer off-site hosting. Majhost.com to be specific, since it doesn't have as much klunk as photobucket, and because they don't change the uploading procedure every time you look away and are unlikely to do so in the future.

[Nick]

I use Photobucket for my online pics across various forums and it can be very slow and clunky at times. On the good side it is fairly easy to upload to, all your pics can be seen in various files and it's free.

On the other hand I'd be willing to pay something to this site if I could put my specific model pics on here. 640x480 is a good size for me too.

The questions (that I can think of) are really:
How much space would we need?
How much would the extra server needs cost?
How much would that cost individually?
Can we prevent hotlinking from this site to avoid visitor overload?

[Supertom]

OK here's the thing on image uploading - it was a bad idea to begin with.  We had a virus embedded in a JPEG that was uploaded a few years back and it took the site down.  Overscan pretty much had to rebuild the site and try to salvage the forum data over the next few days.  A few measures have been put up to make sure it doesn't happen again but it's not foolproof.  We kept the feature up since online albums such as Picasa, Flickr, etc were still in their infancy and hadn't caught up yet. 

You'll notice that most other modeling sites do not have a file upload feature either.  There are two reasons for that: file security (as discussed before) and space/money.  Sites like Hyperscale, ARC, Modeling Madness, Armorama, etc have huge operating costs and have had to ask for sponsors to keep going.  They're paying huge amounts of money for bandwidth and server hosting fees - and giving several thousand members the ability to upload their own images is just asking for trouble.  I'd like to note that the majority of these sites also take up a large bulk of their owner's time - something I would like to avoid.  The focus on WhatIf will always be family first, and as such I would prefer that the site be hands-off for the admins and moderators as much is possible.  Let me repeat that: Being a moderator or admin on WhatIf is NOT AND WILL NEVER BE A FULL-TIME JOB.

I'm glad to see that most of you guys are already using offsite storage.  For those of you who prefer direct uploads, I apologize for having to disable the feature.  I recognize that it's a nice perk but it entails a lot of risk for us, and ultimately doesn't do a whole lot for the site and its people overall in return.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings,

Tom

[kitnut617]

There is one argument against using a third party link, I've just tried to read a thread about the TSR2 and the first post is filled with pictures which are huge in size (the monitor I use is a 19" and the pics are only half displayed) and I don't know how many there are but what was trying to appear was at least ten pics but because it was taking soooo long to show up on the screen I just exited the thread.  I think it would have been a really good thread too but I've other things to do than watch dozens of pics trying to appear.

[Maverick]

That, however, isn't the fault of the site or the admin or the way this is running.

It's a choice that whoever put up the links made to have them at that size.  I recently asked about this issue after reading about it here and the general consensus I found was that 800 x 600 is acceptable.  If someone posts up a 2000 x 1000 pic, that's their choice.  Some with large monitors & good screen resolutions will have no issues.  Others, with smaller monitors or lower resolutions will.  A simple message to the owner of the pic to resize is a winner if it's a problem as I believe the pics in question are by a very new member who mightn't be aware of the issues here.

Also, many third party sites have the ability to resize the image anyway.

Regards,

Mav