Author Topic: Reviews with pictures  (Read 12417 times)

Spriggan

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #30 on: May 22, 2003, 02:00:05 AM »
I don't like that way.  If forces people with dial-ups to download large graphics.  And eats up bandwith.  
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Tage

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #31 on: May 22, 2003, 12:17:43 PM »
Brian has the right idea. When I completely rewrote the site, it was with the idea that we'd give much greater control and flexibility to the admins and authors. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the admins and authors didn't really know what to do with that flexibility. Hence, most of the department pages look like crap, and no one ever does anything interesting with the reviews.

Yeah, remember the cool little thing where you can put clock images by putting ###score=8###? Haven't seen it used in ages.

At this point I'm not sure where the balance between automation and flexibility is.
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Brian

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #32 on: May 22, 2003, 01:39:42 PM »
Well Tage, as I mentioned earlier there are some simple things you can do in-code to make it easier (and more obvious) for people to add pics. But the others around here seem to think you are too lazy to code it. :)

And Spriggan -- the simple method I mentioned is going to consume bandwidth just as much as any other method. If you have pictures on a page, bandwidth is required to download them, regardless of what method you use to display them. Although most dial-up users should be used to the idea that it'll take some time to download large images. The text is going to display in the meantime anyway, so it's not going to affect their ability to read the review.

Of course, you could always 1) require that <img>'s are no larger than, say, 300x200, or 2) tell people to use <a href="URL/image.jpg"> tags instead of <img> tags, which will of course let them decide whether or not to click on the link and display the image.

If you guys decided to allow reviewers to add pics via a simple method like this, you should have a note somewhere on the Review submission page explaining how to do this.

Spriggan

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #33 on: May 22, 2003, 05:32:19 PM »
I used that in the webpage review Tage ;D

And Brian if the pictures are thumbnails or on another page (like gamespot) then the bandwith isn't used unless people want to see them.  I personaly don't need screen shots when I read a review.  I can understand it for Wargams and videogames, but the push here is for RPG books!  Now that's a waste if I've ever seen one.
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Entsuropi

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #34 on: May 22, 2003, 05:37:51 PM »
Spriggan, check out my earlier comments regarding RPg piccies.
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Fellfrosch

Spriggan

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #35 on: May 22, 2003, 05:42:41 PM »
I know what your comments are and I still think it's not worth the time.  But the last say is Fell's and Tage's not mine.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2003, 05:43:08 PM by Spriggan »
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Brian

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #36 on: May 22, 2003, 05:53:41 PM »
I don't particularly care whether reviews have screenshots or not. It might be nice to see what a product looks like, but its not critical. I was just trying to point out that there are simple options for achieving that objective if fell decides it would be a good idea.

And the thumbnails is probably the best way to do it -- it is very easy with PHP to auto-generate thumbnails.

Spriggan

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Re: Reviews with pictures
« Reply #37 on: May 22, 2003, 06:29:08 PM »
Tage's pretty familiar with PHP so I'm sure he knows about that.  My knowledge is limited to what I use with flash.  The biggest problem we've got is the copyright. Which we've never figured out.  Next is implementing it in a way we like.  And that includes getting the pictures onto the site.  I don't think any of the admins want to be contatly uploading pictures.  And I know Tage dosen't want to give everyone file access, even if it is limited to pictures.

So as Tage said this site is very flexable but we're all too lazy to do anything with it.  Or in my case lazy and not talent.  If you've seen the Video Game page then you know what I'm talking about.
Screw it, I'm buying crayons and paper. I can imagineer my own adventures! Wheeee!

Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding.