quote:Originally posted by carolelliott:
Good morning Cap,
I was wondering about pixel image sizing. I use 140 pix (thumbnails) and sometimes 160pix thumbs.
I would like to try 180 pix thumb nail size. But, would buyers using different browers be able to view them at that size. In otherwords does it matter what size thumbnail you use in your templates? is there a set standard ?
No standard to my knowledge. At least not the way that we have been doing it. By that, I mean the HTML script that I gave you goes to Auctiva's server and downloads the entire image, say 640x480, and then tells your computer to shrink it and display it 140 pixels wide. This is the old SD way of doing it. The one thing you want to consider if you go wider is this: if you have your images set up to display in rows (i.e. your code has a <br> after every second or third </a> tag) will you be able to get that many pictures abreast at that width without it pushing your borders out (the dreaded horizontal scroll bar).
For example: 180 wide + 2 more for 2 borders (in IE) + 4 more for 2 margins = an image that takes up 186 pixels of width. Three abreast would be 558 pixels. As long as you've got that much empty space inside your division (or paragraph, or (horrors) table at 800x600, you'd be okay. Otherwise, you'd want to tweak your code, and, of course there's several different ways you can go about doing that.
Back to how we make our thumbnails. Looking at it from a speed standpoint, as I always do, the primo way to do thumbnails is to have seperate tiny thumbnails on the server in addition to your original 640 x 480's. The drawback, if it is one, is that Auctiva presently offers only the 400 wide and 96 wide thumbs. The benefit is that when your customer opens your listing, each thumb might only be, say 5 kB in size, as compared to the originals of maybe as much as 75 kB. If you got a half-dozen thumbs, thats a difference of waiting for 30 kB to download and 450 kB to download. If your customer's on dial-up, that may be a factor. You never know. I tend to respect
it though.
An advantage to the way Auctiva does their auto downsized 400x300 "click to enlarge" feature is that when your customer clicks on the first thumbnail, he or she is taken to a "manual slide-show", more or less, of all of your big images. They don't have to hit the back button to get to the listing to be able to click the next thumbnail. They just click to the next page of the "slideshow". More customer friendly. I'd like to see them offer that with the 96 wides at some point in the future.
For now, I'm changing all my <img src> tags over to the "URL96x96" tags since that Auctiva says they have the bugs ironed out of their Javascript for this set-up. I know 96 is somewhat small, but you have to keep in mind what a thumbnail really is. It's just a button...a button that gives a hint of what you'll see when you click it. Most customers are going to click it if your main image and description interests them enough. They won't be minutely scrutinizing the detail of the thumbnail when they know they can just click and see it close-up. But if they get tired of waiting for the listing to load, all the thumb-detail in the world won't get them back.
I usually don't eitherquote:
ps, I have no idea what your talking about ?
quote:
Har. Never mind the dosh, how about a nice corn cob, instead? giggle ... is that pirate gibberish ?
Good Lord! I forgot your not familiar with Iowa. I thought since there was no bog-roll in your loo, you could use a corn cob, instead, like we do out here. <ouch> Kind of tough on the ol' chalfonts, what?
CB