Why is the IMG feature not enabled on PF?

[Andre]

So I made this long post on the non existence of positive feedback and most importantly a comprehensive graph that reveals it all. I know that the image feature for some reason is still not working in Earth science and elsewhere, so against my principles, I attempt to attach it. It must be in the thread. A picture is worth a thousand words and nobody seems to be clicking links judging the reactions in discussion.

So I go for it, try to attach the picture and I find myself fighting the pop up blocker and in the end the post is gone. All for nothing.

Please please please, enable IMG. It's on every other forum. Why not here?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I believe that images are only enabled in General Discussion.

 

[Moridin]

Although I cannot speculate on the reason(s) as to why the current system is set up as it is, one reason could be that it is in favor of users with a lower Internet connection speed.

On a related side note, I just noticed that the usage of this BBCode tag is enabled in the Math and Science Tutorial forum and the Homework and Coursework sections as well as Independent Research and Academic & Career Guidance.

 

[robphy]

It would be great to have it in the Relativity forum as well, since
"a spacetime diagram is worth a thousand words".

 

[hotcommodity]

You got to love the irony tho', posting about the lack of negative feedback and the result of it being negaitive feedback.

 

[jtbell]

At home I have only a dialup connection and I do not want to be forced to download every image in a thread when I open it.

 

[ranger]

Isnt there like an option in the user settings to not show images or something? Also I know that most websites have a low bandwidth version. I never bothered to see if PF has any though.

 

[Andre]

You got to love the irony tho', posting about the lack of negative feedback and the result of it being negaitive feedback.

Right, actually it seemed more like negative feedback on a hthttps://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=162192[/URL], let's call it constructive feedback. You may note that the big graphs over there with few basic colors in GIF format are superior to other compression methods. Big graphs take only a few (10-20) Kb and hence are very friendly for dial up user. I could live with a very stringent limits for that. The problem is that when you want to elaborate a lot in between a story of graph images, it's not possible with attachments.

 

[DaveC426913]

At home I have only a dialup connection and I do not want to be forced to download every image in a thread when I open it.

What's a dialup connection? Is it something to do with dialysis?

 

[jtbell]

If I have to wait too long for something to download, my kidneys start to hurt!

 

[robphy]

Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/ ) has extensions like https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/232/ http://imglikeopera.mozdev.org/, which conveniently allow you to control whether or not images load.

There is also a standard Firefox option to load images from the originating website only. So, IMG tags to images that are not hosted at PF (e.g. imageshack pictures) wouldn't show up [unless, possibly, they are explicitly requested]. PF-rendered LaTeX images, graphic smileys, and other PF-site graphics would still show up.

For the severely bandwidth-limited.. or those who prefer their webcontent without graphics, java, javascript, flash, etc... ,
http://links.sourceforge.net/
http://lynx.browser.org/

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In my opinion, for teaching and learning physics, graphics are very useful to convey things that text and equations alone cannot. The graphics, of course, don't have to be (and probably shouldn't be) high-resolution full-color images. [I hate to see a full-page, full-color scan of someone's calculation on looseleaf.]

I use the picture environment in LaTeX to include line graphics (e.g. spacetime diagrams) in the relativity forums. But they take a while to do... manually or with help from a perl script I wrote to convert (say) Maple postscript graphics to LaTeX qbezier. What might make a nice feature at PF is support for SVG, and maybe an interface to produce SVG [which could be used to draw simple diagrams].