+opulia Posted April 10, 2010 Share Posted April 10, 2010 I recently tried to check out GC24ZBX on my iPhone as I hate printing paper notes when I can access the details online and save a tree or three. The Geocaching.com application froze for a few minutes and when it finally loaded, I found an image was the large part of the description. Upon checking the description on my laptop at home, I found that the image is a whopping 380kB. Downloading this on a 3G connection (or where I was at the time, GPRS) is quite painful, and also waste of bandwidth for those on low speed desktop connections. A large image like this one can be compressed further quite easily, and can also be hosted on the Geocaching.com site under the cache photo gallery. This can then be hotlinked in the description to prevent dead/slow third party servers potentially not loading images that may be required to find the cache. Is it possible for reviewers to check this sort of thing when approving new cache listings, as part of the general guidelines they follow? Link to comment
+larryc43230 Posted April 10, 2010 Share Posted April 10, 2010 A large image like this one can be compressed further quite easily, and can also be hosted on the Geocaching.com site under the cache photo gallery. Compression might or might not be a good idea: If the image is part of a puzzle cache, and data required to solve the puzzle is embedded in the image, compression could easily destroy the data that's needed to solve the puzzle. --Larry Link to comment
Keystone Posted April 10, 2010 Share Posted April 10, 2010 Is it possible for reviewers to check this sort of thing when approving new cache listings, as part of the general guidelines they follow? Not for what they pay me. I would see this process as a time vampire. I am imagining the notes I'd need to exchange to explain the issue to one cache owner at a time, and the steps for uploading an image to the cache page for those who don't do it that way. I would suggest complaining in a polite email to the cache owner that they have made their geocache unfriendly for mobile geocachers, perhaps unwittingly. Link to comment
+opulia Posted April 10, 2010 Author Share Posted April 10, 2010 Compression might or might not be a good idea: If the image is part of a puzzle cache, and data required to solve the puzzle is embedded in the image, compression could easily destroy the data that's needed to solve the puzzle. --Larry True for extreme compression, however for optimizing graphics for web use it shouldn't normally be an issue. Not for what they pay me. I would see this process as a time vampire. I am imagining the notes I'd need to exchange to explain the issue to one cache owner at a time, and the steps for uploading an image to the cache page for those who don't do it that way. Good point, in my jetlag-induced tiredness I missed the fact that what seems simple to one user may be quite difficult to another... Thanks for the replies guys, and kudos to the review team across the globe! Link to comment
+eigengott Posted April 12, 2010 Share Posted April 12, 2010 Downloading this on a 3G connection (or where I was at the time, GPRS) is quite painful Try http://wap.geocaching.com/ next time. Link to comment
+triga Posted April 13, 2010 Share Posted April 13, 2010 Well, on 3G or even GPRS a 380kb shouldn't take THAT long. It is possible that the application just could not handle it. You could choose in your browser not to load images or go to the WAP page. Also, it should be fairly simple to develop a system that automatically checks files between <img> tags and rejects them if they are too big. Reviewers wouldn't have to do a thing Link to comment
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