Not planned client side image resizing (possible yet?)

[island]

I remember 2-3 years ago a microsoft dev showed me client side resizing using their silverlight browser plugin. That would certainly make uploading a larger number of photos much less taxing on the server and faster if it could be done client side. But, I didn't do anything with it at the time because I figured the majority didn't have that plugin yet, even if pushed by microsoft.

Is anyone doing anything with client side image resizing yet?

Would there be a graceful way for xenforo to integrate a client-side image resizing technology for browsers which included such a plugin?

More and more I'm finding my users trying to upload 10+ megapixel images straight from their cameras which often clogs things up a bit and is a lot of resources if they do a good number at that size. Or if an error is returned that the images are too large, the non-techie users give up as they're not as patient as in years past to resize photos manually now.

 

[Kier]

We could do client-side image resizing with swfupload, but in doing so we lose the upload progress bar, and have to include about 150KB more javascript and Flash with every thread view, so we ditched it.

 

[Blandt]

We could do client-side image resizing with swfupload, but in doing so we lose the upload progress bar, and have to include about 150KB more javascript and Flash with every thread view, so we ditched it.

Silverlight should take a lot less, I'm exploring it as a gallery option .... but as island mentioned Silverlight is not widely installed as flash is.

 

[island]

The status bar is nice, but I'd trade it for client-size resizing since that would pretty much make it redundant for people with reasonable broadband (depending on how large files you wanted to host.) I really like the universality of flash better than silverlight - and because of the recent security issues and prompts to update flashplayer, I imagine a lot more flash player users have 10 now which I believe is required. But I agree, the 150 kB for every thread view seems like a dealbreaker...

 

[island]

Just for curiosity, I tried to attach the same file that a user complained was failing on my vbulletin forum today to this message here.

The status bar goes fairly quickly to 100%, but then xenforo gives me the following error message here:

Information
IMG_0821.JPG - The uploaded file is too large for the server to process.

Since this is a tech forum, we all know how to resize images. But if this weren't a tech forum, how will the average user react to this message?

It seems people more and more are expecting things to be automagic...
In the last week I've had 3 different people give up when their images failed to upload (and post about the error) rather than manually resizing. And yet, the only other option is to keep upping and upping php limits across the board, which means less or no protection against being dosed intentionally or accidentally if I start giving a php upload process 1/16 of the total available memory for example...

 

[Blandt]

Just for curiosity, I tried to attach the same file that a user complained was failing on my vbulletin forum today to this message here.

The status bar goes fairly quickly to 100%, but then xenforo gives me the following error message here:


Since this is a tech forum, we all know how to resize images. But if this weren't a tech forum, how will the average user react to this message? It seems people more and more are expecting things to be automagic...

Xenforo uses the GD library and GD has its limitation. if the file is too big it will throw that error.
Hopefully ImageMagick will be implemented in future releases

 

[island]

Just added to my post above as well -- I'm not sure how imagemagick compares to gd in terms of efficiency/memory usage, but I suppose one big advantage is that imagemagick can be allowed to use more resources while not having to increase the php resources across the board (thus maintaining protection from general php runaway processes/dos across the board.)

 

[island]

Also on the topic of automatic image resizing for common current camera resolutions, I prefer my users to attach files directly rather than using external sites because that way the images are available over time instead of ending up with an archive full of threads with lots of broken images when the external sites remove the images, change their hotlinking policies, or disappear, etc. I won't prevent someone from using IMG tags, but it's important to me to have the forum attachment system work as easily as all the image hosting sites. But when picassa and all the 'imagebox' type sites provide a one-step, it becomes difficult to tell people they need to resize on their computer, then upload now.

 

[island]

P.S. still thinking about this,

Would it be possible/doable/easy to have a switch in your preferences for a client side swfupload?

Would the extra 150k be cached?

 

[Blandt]

P.S. still thinking about this,

Would it be possible/doable/easy to have a switch in your preferences for a client side swfupload?

Would the extra 150k be cached?

yes the javascript will be cached

 

[gib]

We could do client-side image resizing with swfupload, but in doing so we lose the upload progress bar, and have to include about 150KB more javascript and Flash with every thread view, so we ditched it.

Would it be possible to have both the existing cool upload file option and an "upload/resize picture" option ?
or keep it for a gallery option, if it ever comes along

 

[Luke F]

We could do client-side image resizing with swfupload, but in doing so we lose the upload progress bar, and have to include about 150KB more javascript and Flash with every thread view, so we ditched it.

What? swfupload has a really powerful progress callback, and you can just load the swf and javascript on demand.