[WikiEN-l] Re: Thumbnails, varying connection speeds

Wed Feb 11 03:24:47 UTC 2004

> From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>

[snippages]

> It seems that a lot of people have begun to make thumbnails excessively
> large. For visitors with low resolutions, 350px is a *lot* ...

[snippages]

> Also, it makes the files pretty large. 14KB doesn't sound large to DSL
> people, but on ISDN it would take 2 seconds to download on maximum
> speed. Add to that the fact that Wikipedia isn't always at maximum
> speed, and that many people don't even have ISDN!

This is a good point. It's astonishing how quickly one forgets. Just 
four years ago I was still on dialup and was using a machine with an 80 
megabyte hard drive, and was just flabbergasted when people would 
casually suggest sending me an .mp3 file that was "only" three 
megabytes.  When I barely had ten megabytes to spare on my hard drive, 
and didn't really feel like spending half an hour on a download. I also 
remember the Apple Worldwide Developers' Conference in 1996, when 
Apple, and many companies, were on T1 lines--and many people and 
companies were not. The answer to every question was "oh, we have that 
on the web." I was stewing, because my _home_ machine was 56 kbps--and 
at _work_ the only Internet connection was a 28 kbps dialup. I didn't 
say anything, but finally someone raised his hand and said "Please 
remember that in Japan most of our modems are only 2400 bps and we pay 
about $20 per hour to connect."

A few weeks ago we helped a friend install the critical security 
patches--just the CRITICAL security patches--for her Windows XP laptop 
over a dialup connection. Jeez, what _could_ Microsoft be thinking of? 
They probably think everyone is on a T1.

I've had DSL for about three years afraid I've gotten in the habit of 
thinking that 30K to 50K is a reasonable size for pictures. Once I've 
have had (a GUI/a high-speed connection/a CD-R drive/whatever) for a 
few years, I begin to feel that everyone really ought to have them and 
I stop taking the needs of those with less technology seriously.

I'm not sure that thumbnails are the ideal answer, though, because 
they're very annoying for those who _do_ have high-speed connections. I 
wonder whether it would be unreasonable to request that Wikipedia 
support two (or three?) flavors of delivery, chosen in 
Preferences--high graphics, thumbnail graphics, and perhaps no 
graphics?

> --
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: 
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/