Bergie - An easier method for attaching pictures to our posts...?

[Jim Duda]

How many of you use a free web e-mail client like those available on Yahoo.com, HotMail.com, Eudoramail.com, etc.? When you want to attach an image file to your message, doesn't it go something like this:

1. Write your message and click the "Attach File" button.
2. "Browse" to find the desired image file located somewhere in your computer.
3. Click the "Attach File" or "Done" button.

Presto, the image(s) appears (usually following your text) in your message.

So...couldn't that same feature be enabled in forums IF the forum software allowed it? Is it the decision of the forum owner(s) to allow/not allow this? Is it cost prohibitive for them to do so?

I think you do something similar in the "Photo Album" section on another forum so I don't think it is absolutely, positively necessary to store them on a web hosting service or even on your own webpage. We all agree that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm willing to wager that more pics would appear in our posts if we could upload them into the forum directly from our hard drives than having to store them on another server, with the added nuisance of doing so.

Computer folks, please explain if the above makes sense. I posed this question on another forum, but so far, it remains unanswered...

Bergie...???

JD

[spankybird]

Hi Jim,

Well with enough money and lines of programming this could be done. It would also require a very large server to hold all the photos.

As I under stand the forum software, and I could be wrong but don’t think so, when we post our photo’s, we are only telling the forum software where the photo is by the use of the IMG command.

Therefore the forum software really doesn’t have the photo in the text that we posted. Have you ever look at the file size of a picture? They can be from 47,000 to 750,000 bits.

Text takes very little room.

Hope this helps



tom

[Jim Duda]

So...what you're telling us is those free e-mail sites have gigundus servers and do cost a lot of money...too expensive for the typical train forums...correct? (sigh)

JD

[spankybird]

yea, pretty much. My e-mail server is part of my internet provider which is something like $16.00 per month.

You think there was a war over $18.00 per year, what would happen at a monthly fee.

You didn’t read that here, I never said it. [8D]

Maybe someday Hard Drives of that size will also be cheep [:D]



tom

[Anonymous]

I belong to another forum for motorcyclists (another hobby [:D]) and it is free
and it has exactly what you are describing. All I have to do is attach an image
to my post and it is included. So is an avatar library. We have every bit as
many posters as the train sites and handle just as much information. One
small drawback is that recently the owners of the site, in order to keep storage
capacity available, had to begin dumping/deleting old posts that were over a
year old. Either that or buy new mass-storage media and a new server.

Still another forum that I belong to (and moderate on) is for old computers
(yet another hobby! [:O]) and we have a place on the site for each member to
put images in an "album" and then they can be drawn from there to the par-
ticular post, or the whole album can be viewed by other members. We just
put a brand new server and software on line for this, and this site, too, is free.
Each member can also maintain a BLOG (WebLog) as well. Additionally
each member can access the old site/server, now used as archives, for
information from past posts (a lot of technical research goes on there).
Again, all this is free to our members.

So, to answer the question, yes it is possible to do such as you asked. Is
it economically feasable? Only the owners of this site can answer that. It's
their call.

[Jim Duda]

Fingers crossed...

JD

[Anonymous]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this time in other words.

Hard disk is cheap; bandwidth is expensive.

The size of an image file depends upon the color depth the number of pixels across & down, and the compression mechanism used, if any. By color depth, I mean the number of bits per pixel. You can buy digital cameras now that offer 32 bit color depth & over 6 mega pixels. That means that in raw form, without compression, the image would occupy about 24 Megabytes.

Hard disks are being offered with capacities measured in the Giga bytes. Providing enough space for a forum membership of a few hundred people to store some images that are of a reasonable size wouldn't cost a lot to the owner.

What will kill the owner, especially if it's a busy site, is serving up all of those images.

When you post a link to an image in your message, the image isn't stored on the server. The server that hosts the image is still serving it to anyone that reads your post. It's a way to spread the load around.

Tony

[Anonymous]

Jim:
Tony is right. Disk space is cheap; bandwith is expensive. A big potential problem is that many
folks don't know how to compress their photos and also to reduce them to managable sizes.
Please keep in mind that sites such as Yahoo; HotMail; Eudoramail etc., receive paid advertising from other sources to help defray their costs. While for little guys such as me it's an out of pocket expense.
Bill
www.modeltrainjournal.com

[Jim Duda]

Thanks Bill, Tony, and all...couldn't the software impose "limits" on the file size and reject those over the limit? Most of my .jpg image files @ 640X480 come in under 70K. Resizing them is no problem for me (I use Photoshop), but I understand not everyone uses good image editing software. At least now I know that it is technically, if not economically, feasable.

Thanks again for the education lesson.

Jim Duda