Hi all,
    Today while looking thru the thumbnails, I was reminded once again of something I have wanted to suggest for some time.  Although it doesn't occur a lot, on occassion, various images are posted which are not jpgs but are gifs or some similiar animated image format. For those using a dial-up internet connection,  the load time for these type images is extended. I have almost missed seeing a number of these images because there is no notification information on the thumbnail telling me an image is animated and before the animation is loaded I am off to the next page of thumbnails.  Is there a way to add "animation" to the content advisory?  In my opinion that could be helpful to many .

   While on the subject of adding usefull info, there is another suggestion/request which I have along those lines. At the top of each page is a line of print which indicates: "Welcome user, date, time,  and number of artists currently online". From what I can tell, the number of artists on-line is a total for all gallerys. It would be interesting and potentially useful if this number could reflect those visiting the individual galleries instead of the entire site (i.e. - when looking at 'All Thats New' - the number may be 1700 but when looking at 'All Thats New in the Photography Gallery' the number would obviously be noticably less.

   Just some ideas for consideration.

Lee

Thanks for the suggestions/ideas..

I'm not a huge fan of animated gif's as thumbs..I'll bring this up and see what the Staff thinks about this..

As for the second suggestion..I'm sure there is a way to do that..but, I doubt that will happen..

You might want to bring that up in the Community center Forum.

That's the best place for site wide questions or problems.

Well, I would prefer this forum to concentrate on questions and answers, links, tips, imo, what a forum should be!... more than mthly competitions etc etc...all I see is comps and stuff...fine, but why not move em to another link so the forum isnt cluttered up with these things!

As for animated gif's, do they really belong here?

Questions & answers are all well & fine, and appropreiate for the photography forum but the monthly "challenge" we have is only for fun... there's no winner, so it's NOT a competition by any means! The idea is to challenge you to look a a certain subject within that month and show them here in a collection we all can see with one click... We need some fun here too!!! So let's not take the fun away please!!!!!     Akemi

There´s no way to please everybody. Some go to the forum only to join the challenges, DITI´s and Simon Says´s threads....while others go to the forum to share some piece of information on new camera-equipments or techniques. I don´t see no reason why those things can´t be combined like they are now. We all have the option to view and participate in the threads that appeal to us.

But that wasn´t what this thread was about. I like your idea about it only showing the number of members online in specific galleries....although i wonder if it would be possible to single those things out. Best pass that question on to the people doing the programming like pushinfaders suggested. As for the animated GIF´s.  I don´t know how to make an animation like that but i always enjoy seeing them. It´s not like they are any bigger in filesize than a regular JPEG-thumb so why shouldn´t they belong as long as they are smaller than 15kb in size? I´m no expert...but if those GIF´s load slower for you than JPEG´s...even though they are the same size....can´t it be that your browser could use an update or something?

I thought the challenges used to be seperate in the old format??? Maybe I'm wrong, but I really don't see the harm in them being here anyway! The last couple days it seemed like hardly anyone was in the forum anyway, so it's not like the topics for one day are taking up a whole page. I can scroll down and pretty much catch up with almost the whole month!  Just my 2 cents!!!!

Challenges...

I'm a fan of the standard Renderosity Challenge format...but, that's just me..It's easier to manage than the way it's being done now..

Here's a thought..and maybe I'll create another thread about this to get more input..

I would like to see the monthly challenge moved to the standard Renderosity Challenge page format..

For the staff, it's easier to manage..

Since it's a " for fun " challenge..The is no need to make it anonymous, or have voting..

We could still have a thread about your images/entries...I'd prefer one running thread...rather than one for each entry..

But..it's really up to you folks...If we decide to keep the monthly challenge in the forum..I'd still like to go with one long thread, rather than one for each image...

back to  animated GIF's....I'll bring this up...but, if my memory is corect, this was discusses before..(not here,but among the Mods)

I'm not sure how you would stop it, because the programing would only see GIF extension..
I've used Non animated GIF's for thumbs on ocassion..

Diti is a fun feature...It's one thread a week...no big deal...

Diti and Simon seem to be a spur of the moment activity..Which is fine..

I'm open for new ideas on how to make this a fun and educational place for everyone..

We could do a tip of the week segment or something like that...
Some of the more experienced members could take turns offering a Tip of the week in a thread...then the rest of us hacks (like me)could ask questions and discuss it..Like wise the more experience and skilled members could offer more advice on the given subject..Kinda like a weekly mini class room..

just an idea...

That sounds like some very good ideas you have there. And i would also prefer one long thread of challenge-entries instead of one per submission.

LOL!!!  My simple suggestions sure have taken on a new line of discussion with a life of its' own. With that in mind, let me also ramble a bit, lol.  I did not think beyond submitting them to the photography forum because they were just casual suggestions and not earth shattering by any stretch of the imagination and this is the only forum I have posted in. I thought the first of them would help me and others gauge more accurately the total views of an individual posting as compared to the actual number of people who were looking at the specific gallery where it was posted instead of to the total number of people who were visiting the site. I have often wondered how many of the 1700 or so visiters at any given time were actually looking at the photo gallery.

Although some have expressed less than enthusiastic opinions concerning their place in the photography gallery, I am a fan of gifs. On occassion they add a great touch to an image or they help the image be more effective. I got no problems with them at all. In fact I was hoping to help prevent myself and others  (especially those using a slow dial-up connection to the internet) from missing the few that do get posted.

I am also a fan of digital editing and that too seems to be considered  as an unwelcome stepchild by hard core photographers. That is also ok by me. It doesn't bother me a bit that many film photographers use filters, special lens, darkroom techniques, or whatever  experimental process they want to create an image.

I have a rather simplistic approach to  all of it. I consider Photography to be an art form. If the art is primarily created from a photo(s) then as far as I am concerned, it is a candidate for the photography gallery regardless if it film or digital or if it has been edited, animated, filtered, layered, blended or had some other experimental process applied.

Of course it should be no secret that I am not a purist when it comes to photography. I realize that many here are and that is ok by me. I realize certain criteria must be set in place to prevent total mayhem but hard, fast, rigid interpretations or catagorizations of art are destined to be more of a deterent than an aid as far as I can see.

As to forums and what they should and should not include, that also seems to be open to more input and participation if the subject matters are not restricted. Having said that, let me hasten to add that I definitely am in favor of streamlining the forum as much as possible. If that involves things such as moving the challenge postings to the overall standard site challenge format or combining multiple individual postings into a single thread (i.e. -  all contest/challenge submittions to one thread) etc., then so be it and gladly so; but as been stated previously, it is no big problem to scroll thru the many to find the few one is interested in (even with a slow internet connection, lol).

Now I feel like I have commented on someone else's thread, lol.

Lee

LOL Lee, your thread did take on a life of it's own. There should not be a difference between load times of a GIF thumb ora JPG thumb. But perhaps some way to indicate that the main image is animated would be useful. As it stands now, if you don't view an animated image at full size, you won't see animation unless the artist made it under 700 pixels wide. If I do an animation, I make sure mention that fact in my comments. As of now, there is no Animation Category, would would be nice to see. Seeing how many visitors are in a specific gallery when there would be a nice bit of info too. I personally am for keep in things related to photography in one Forum. It makes it a little easier than having to visit various forums for different things like Challenges. The idea to upload to just one thread for the monthly Challenges is a great idea and would help keep the clutter down. For things like Simons and DITIs though, I am not sure the one thread approach would work. They'd get awfully long and those poor souls on dial-up would have to wait ages for each page to load. Oops, got sidetracked and am only now getting back to this after about 3 hours. Better post it before I get distracted again...just will sum things up by saying I think there is room for everything we've been posting here up to now, but we could certainly streamline things a bit.

By the way, welcome back as the Moderator Bruce, good to have you here again!

Well it is great that people are contibuting to the gallery and I  am sure we will be thinking of ways to make things better.. Speed and ease of use   is also important, things seems to be better now so we dont want to slow things down in any way esp for those not on a Broadband connection... Also it is nice to have some fun as well as the serious side of our  interests..