No there's no way of doing this. :-)

I don't see much point in separating the 2d and 3d stuff. As far as I'm concerned, it's all 2d - you look at it on a computer screen - whether you create the illusion of 3d by using software which renders 3d models, or by using other skills to create shadows, depth effects and so on in programs like UF, is irrelevant to me, and I quite like being able to see all of it without having to visit other galleries. Best wishes, Simon.

'Very slowly and then catching up' - have you tried increasing the number of threads? That sounds like the sort of behaviour I would expect from a small number of threads. To explain this 'threads' thing: Windows splits the processor's time between all the programs running on the computer. Each program (or 'process') can split itself into several 'threads', each of which gets allocated time by Windows. The effect is that several things in your program (in this case UF) appear to be happening simultaneously. The maximum-threads option determines how many separate threads at a time UF can have running for a fractal window; so if you have a small limit, you'll see that only a few layers in a many-layered image appear to be progressing at a time. I don't know exactly how UF splits all its tasks into threads, so I can't be sure that increasing them will fix the gradient window problem, but it's worth a try.

I found that I needed to increase the maximum number of threads that it can use. It's on the 'Fractal' page of the Options dialog. Initially it had defaulted to 4, which was making UF4 run about 33% slower than UF3 on my machine. When I increased it (to 32) UF4 ran slightly faster than UF3.

Now that I've played with the options that are there, I don't see any great need to change anything: If you want to find out about something specific you can do a search (including searching for your own name, if you want to find all threads you contributed to); If you want to read only active threads, you just click Mark All Read each time you exit the forum; If you want to see all the old threads, just click archive. I'm on dial-up, and haven't found it particularly slow. Having the + would be nice, but there are other things that I'd rather were sorted out first.

It does help, thanks! :-)

Message edited on: 07/20/2005 12:47

Wouldn't the easiest thing be to order the threads by the date of the last message added to them, rather than by the date of the first message (as they are now) ?

Agreed.

This is a great idea. You guys are doing a great job!

A few comments on Kathye's and Rick's ideas: Separate galleries for beginners and experts. I think this is a bad idea, or at least unworkable. Look at all the hoo-ha a while back about what constitutes a fractal image. I can just see all sorts of feelings getting hurt when someone decides to post their stuff in the Experts gallery and others disagree about their assessment of their abilities and decides to say so. I think any system based on the number of posts a person makes is a bad idea, especially if it rewards making more posts. People would post any old rubbish just to keep their star rating up. And in my opinion the relationship between quality and frequency of posting is an inverse one, i.e. on the whole (and there are of course exceptions!) those people that post less often tend to post the best stuff, so if anything, any star system should give higher rankings to the infrequent posters. I think any system that relies upon us to collectively decide what's good is doomed, for all the reasons that the Hot 20 is doomed. That's what I like about my previous suggestion: we get to choose whose opinions we respect, and what's more, we do so privately. If I look at the images Keith thought worthy of comment, I can do so without anyone else knowing I'm doing so, especially Keith. No egos get involved. Anyway, enough for now.

Hi Viv. Yes I know. I'd thought about using the favourite images for that purpose myself, but it's not easy enough. Firstly, you don't get thumbnails, so if you want to put them in you have to hard-code the HTML manually with links to the not-at-all-obviously-named thumbs. Secondly, an e-mail gets sent off to the artist. Thirdly, you have to start doing it (so old images you've seen don't get added automatically) and you have to keep it up. Fourthly, unless you don't mind the list becoming very long (which is especially a problem without thumbs, and when all images get listed on one page) there's a disincentive to add lots of images. From the users' point of view, it's not trivial to find the lists either - you have to navigate to the artist's page, which isn't as easy as it could be. What I'd like is for the process to be a lot simpler. My second suggestion is probably the easiest to implement, you just select an artist and click a link that builds a gallery of images they commented on - it would be in date order and have thumbs, what could be easier? R'osity could also add a link to the list that appears under a viewed image: "By Simon Kane || Gallery | Contact | Images I Like". Having 'People whose taste I like' links on our own pages might also make it easier to keep track of whose lists we find useful (especially if it's a private list). I guess I just think that if the My Favourite Images list was well-designed enough for what I'd like to see, we'd be using it for that already; and since we're not...

This place still has a Hot 20? Am I ever in it? :-) Seriously though, I stopped taking any notice of the Hot 20 a long time ago when I realised that it didn't reflect my tastes. Couldn't care less whether my images get in there, it would only be useful to me if I could go there and quickly find the 'best' images from the last couple of weeks that I'd missed, and since it isn't useful for that... Perhaps the problem is that it's The Hot 20, rather than A Hot 20. What about having some way of seeing an individual artist's choice of their favourite recent images? So if I happen to like Dobby's taste in art, I could click a link to see his personal Hot 20 (which wouldn't include his own stuff of course). If I think Dobby's taste sucks, or that he just chooses his friends' images, I don't bother to look at his choices, I look at someone else's. Not having a single, unique Hot 20 list would reduce the incentive for people to vote-swap. Another similar idea would be to be able to filter images based upon who has commented on them. So again, if I happen to like Dobby's taste, then I can just select to view only those Most Recent images which he happened to comment on. Anyway, just a bit of lateral thinking. :-)

I haven't logged into this site for over three months, but I just knew they'd be a current debate about the Hot 20 in the Forum. :-) I have missed it all; it always gives me a good laugh!

I can see it. This link should take you to it:

Pearls of Wisdom

If that doesn't work, maybe your browser is using its history rather than refreshing. Try clicking the refresh button. If that doesn't work, I've no idea what the problem is!

Barbara, Thanks for taking the time to check this out. I'm glad you liked the gallery! :-) Best wishes, Simon.