Displaying photos inline

[mklotz]

I prefer to have my photos in line with the associated text, rather than hanging at the end of the post as occurs in some of the other fora to which I post. This means resizing them and storing on PhotoBucket. My procedure for doing this may be of some benefit to others...

I have two, normally empty, files on my desktop - PICS and PICLETS. photos to be processed are dumped into PICS. I use FastStone to do the processing. Its defaults are set to look in PICS for inputs and dump processed files into PICLETS.

With one keypress and one (two if multiple photos) mouse click, the photo(s) are resized to 800 x 600, my watermark is added and the resulting forum-ready photo(s) is stored in PICLETS.

When I click the upload icon in PB, it automatically looks in PICLETS for input. Key Ctrl-A to select all of what's there and the resized photos begin uploading.

Once your photo displays, click on the URL= below the IMG title and key Ctrl-C and your scratchpad contains exactly what you need to insert (using Ctrl-V) into the text of your post to make the photo display.

Obviously, setting this up takes a little time but, if you regularly include photos in your post, the savings in time and frustration are well worth the effort.

[Jon]

Yup, inline 800px-width photos are the way to go in forums. Smaller photos that are clicked to display an enlarged version are in part a relic of lower-bandwidth days, and very large or high-resolution photos are simply not necessary for forums. This inline method also means that you do not need some sort of image indexing or referencing system ("see photo #3 at the bottom..."). Of course people have to consciously arrange their photos in their text, which might disincentivize people from adding photos, so the all-in-one photo attachment method does serve its purpose.

Your posts reminds me of a keyboarding speed tricks post that I've been composing for a while now. Everything from using Control-L to focus in the browser address bar, to learning Dvorak typing. Every time I think the post is complete I remember another keyboard shortcut that I use frequently.

[mklotz]

An essential for me is a text processor (I use DocPad) that has a macro capability.

Writing the text of a post in a processor separate from the forum's processor makes one immune to possible glitches in the latter. Moreover, if your forum post vaporizes due to a Murphy-strike, your text is still preserved in the processor.

Macros give you the ability to save lots of time typing oft-recurring sequences. A few that I use frequently are...

automatically set up to put something in the html needed to make it appear in italics. (In proper English, foreign words/phrases and publication titles should be italicized). Hitting the macro generates and positions the cursor between the two markers, ready to type the word or title.

automatically change to uppercase the last word typed. No messing around with shift keys when typing acronyms.

automatically set up parens and quotes, e.g. create () or "" and position cursor between them.

duplicate the current line. It's often quicker to copy a line and change a few characters than to retype the line.

[Paul Jones]

I agree, inline photos provides the easiest way to follow the story. Also, specifically naming each photo with the subject of the photo helps the viewer when mousing over the photo and verifying the subject photo by name.

[olderdan]

Thanks for the useful info, I have so far been doing it the hard way using Paint.Net one photo at a time.

[Jon]

Naming each photo with relevant keywords also increases the likelihood of your posts surfacing in image-based search engines like Google Images.

Also be sure that you have local copies of everything that you're keeping on a photo hosting site. Ideally you keep the original large hi-res image on your computer, and then you resize from that original, or from a copy of that original. Each time you adjust and save a jpeg image, the quality of the image degrades.

And (since I'm on a roll here ), look at image optimization too. Either as an option in an existing local graphics editing program, or as a separate application, or as an option in a web-based image hoster. Optimization can often cut around 25% of the weight of a jpeg. Locally, this means that you save hard drive space. For forum posting, it means that your images will load that much faster.

[mklotz]

I agree, inline photos provides the easiest way to follow the story. Also, specifically naming each photo with the subject of the photo helps the viewer when mousing over the photo and verifying the subject photo by name.

I'm a bit lax about explanatory names. I started using computers when memory was precious, file names were fixed length and couldn't contain blanks. I've never outgrown that early conditioning so my photo names tend to be short.

[Toolmaker51]

I have to copy all the comments, to improve my posting ability. An excellent to do list. SLOW Down, I can't work that fast!
I do write offline for longer 'projects', Paint or browse camera is my common upload route. For whatever anti-social reason I restrict my jpegs to the forum in question, I'm not after market penetration yet. Putting up Tool Plans would alter that, natch'.
Until I replace for greater memory and CAD, real photo-edit ware, and process 'juice', present setup is decent. But then, I'm not authoring at the rate some are, either.

And Jon, speaking of shortcuts, some symbology would be nice. Deg/Min/Sec via (x' x'' x'') isn't bad, more along lines of temperature F or C, and a few engineering inserts. I have maybe a hundred in derelict OOC laptop to post, but system isn't compatible. I used them at work sometime back, like anybody [you'd think] could find in word, but I guess they weren't so invested in their bacon related income. They looked at me how some see Bill Gates. If they only knew.

[Paul Jones]

Marv,

I know what you mean about computers with limited memory. My first computer I used was an IBM 1401 using the IBM 80 column punched card. We used FORTRAN IV and required at least 12000-character memory and four tape drives for spooling. We finally installed a CDC 6400 mainframe and programming was so much easier despite still having core memories. We replaced it with an IBM 370 and eventually upgraded the OS to virtual memory capability, then installing IBM 3033, IBM 3081, IBM 3090 with internal vector processors, and eventually Cray supercomputers (more like over-priced refrigeration units). All the computers used FORTRAN because all the equations involved matrices and complex numbers so we let the compiler keep track the imaginary number arithmetic. Now everything is massively parallel and virtually unlimited computer capacity. Along the way, I even built and 8-bit 8085 than ran a FORTRAN compiler and actually did real work.

Regards, Paul

[Toolmaker51]

Marv, I know what you mean about computers with limited memory. My first computer I used was an IBM 1401 using the IBM 80 column punched card. Regards, Paul

And Mc-Bee Key Sort? They barely appear in Google, but I'd love to use them again for handwritten records. Last mention I saw was Dean Grennells ABC's of Reloading, probably printed in the 60's