PlantFile improvement

I have no idea if this has been asked for before, but it would be so nice if we could flip thru photos in an entry in PlantFiles more easily and quickly; more user friendly.

Other sites have an arrow forwards and backwards where you can enlarge 1 of the thumbnail photos and then continue your viewing pleasure of them all by clicking on the arrow to zip thru all of the enlarged photos under that 1 entry. Better yet, I have noticed sites also have it where you can click anywhere on the photo and go on to the next enlarged photo. REAL EASY! 1 KEY STROKE!!!!!

Here to go thru them I have to scroll down to the pool of thumbnails, click on a thumbnail to enlarge it, which automatically brings me back up to the new enlarged photo but instead of bringing me dead onto the new photo, it takes me to the top of the page with all the writing so I have to scroll down a bit to see the entire photo. Then to get to the next enlarged photo, I have to scroll back down to bottom of page and click on next photo to enlarge it, again scroll down to get the entire photo all in view and so on thru all the pictures going up and down, up and down. So many extra, keystrokes! Needless to say, I rarely look thru all the photos even when I want to.

Such an update would be so appreciated! THANKS

i totally agree! carpal tunnel could well be averted.

Hi Debi!

hi kell!

Hi girlfriends, I agree that is a feature that could be improved.

Not one of the girlfriends, but I agree with all of them and their comments.

You can be a girlfriend too ViburnumValley unless you need to be our boyfriend!

Hi Alice!!! Long time no see! Hope you are doing GREAT!

I'll request permission from my wife to be a boyfriend (politely declining girlfriend status)...

Can I join in?? ^_^

I also agree. PF is cumbersome and 'so last decade'. Needs to be made much easier.

Which do you prefer, Victor, boyfriend or girlfriend? (Loaded question!)

all boys and girls are welcome! lol

Hope your wife says YES, Mr. ViburnumValley!

You know Victor, we all think you are so hot! Pirl is always saying "Get a load of Victor's clematis! I am in love"

Victor is one talented guy!

I've been doing research on irises and it's been hours of waiting for the ten pages I've seen to load. No other flower takes that long, not even roses: quite discouraging. It doesn't happen anywhere but on irises in Plant Files.

Hee hee! Thanks, ladies.

Don't you hate that Pirl? Makes what should be fun and fast, just frustrating.

The image loading times are determined by the file sizes. I think the file sizes of the images in the Plant Files are much larger than they need to be. I looked at a zinnia image whose physical size was 800 x 1066 pixels with a file size of over a megabyte (1,176,000 bytes to be exact).

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/327828/

It could just as easily have been one tenth that size and still be a good looking 800 x 1066 pixel image. It is primarily a matter of the JPEG quality setting. The zinnia picture attached here is about 100 KB (103,918 bytes to be exact), and yet it is also 800 x 1066 pixels in size. The difference is primarily just JPEG quality. The JPEG I have attached here is much more highly compressed, so it has a much smaller file size, and can load faster. I believe the file size, and not the pixel size, is what governs loading speed. The file sizes of the pictures in the Plant Files could probably be reduced to 10% of what they occupy now without reducing their pixel sizes, which would make them load 10 times faster.

ZM


This message was edited Feb 6, 2012 12:26 AM

Kell - it's maddening. I figured with the Super Bowl in progress it might proceed more swiftly. I got one page with only three minutes of waiting! Another was five minutes. The next was 12 minutes. So now I'm up to page 12 and have just 588 more to go.

Thanks for the explanation, Zen_Man.

Maybe it's outsourced to Motor Vehicles???

Ha ha! With the way I'm pulling my hair out it seems we could have the same "do" very soon, Victor!

Pirl can you give me a link or two to pages that are loading particularly slowly? Some are hard to load due to file size, but nothing should be taking 5-10 minutes or more to load anywhere on the site.

Seems admin does not even feel my suggestion is worthy of even an acknowledgement of being posted, much less of a comment one way or the other. I guess that is an answer in of itself.

Terry - just a search for "tall bearded iris" will yield 600 pages of entries. Loading each page of entries is the time waster. I've given up searching.

Did you try the advanced search and limit it to TBs? It loaded right up for me: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/advanced.php?nn[71]=6&nn[1]=0&nn[2]=0&nn[3]=0&nn[4]=0&nn[5]=0&nn[6]=0&nn[112]=0&nn[8]=0&nn[9]=0&nn[23]=0&nn[59]=0&nn[10]=0&nn[12]=0&nn[113]=0&sname=Iris&Search=Search

I did and that did load. However, going from (say) page 6 to page 7 took far too long.

Can you try it again and see if it's still taking that long? I just scrolled through the first several pages, skipped ahead to page 12, and everything loaded within a few seconds.

Works perfectly now! Thanks so much.

Pirl, I'd like to take credit for doing something magical, but I didn't do anything. We asked the tech team to look at the site performance stats and see if there's been any hinkiness lately.

And to address kell's original question, we also proposed a navigation tool for the new photos and for PF. They agreed those are good ideas and will see what can be done within the existing structure :-)

Thank you!