Story Images

by
in pipedot on (#3MY)
Good news everyone! A new (user-visible) feature! Story images!

Okay, so trying to find an acceptable 64x64 pixel icon for each story got old pretty fast. There never seemed to be enough of them and they didn't always fit the article correctly. But with today's news sites wanting lots of eye candy, most articles already have at least one relevant image of the story. So we'll just make a small thumbnail of that!

You can change the quality of the thumbnail using the "Story Image Style" in your settings page. Or you can opt to keep the icons or disable the images altogether. If you have a high resolution screen (e.g. Apple's Retina displays) with a pixel ratio greater than the traditional 1:1, you can select one of the "High Resolution" options to get a sharper image.
Reply 13 comments

Awesome (Score: 4)

by spacebar@pipedot.org on 2014-05-26 17:36 (#1X0)

I'm consistently impressed with how this site is run. Great idea. =. hurrah.

Looks like progress! (Score: 2, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-26 19:39 (#1X2)

I like it, but I liked the icons too. And yet, something about the icons seemed old school, so this is nice, especially if the code resizes the images. I know the trend now - Slashdot is definitely guilty of it in the redesign - is huge images that span the article. That kind of drives me crazy, maybe because I'm a more text oriented kind of person and I am turned off by sites that seem to emphasize images and bling over the text, which is the content I'm looking for.

This seems like the perfect compromise - nice work!

So how soon til this gets hacked to show inexplicably horrid images as a joke?

A thumbnail directly connected to the story... (Score: 2)

by unitron@pipedot.org on 2014-05-27 08:40 (#1XC)

...that we can enlarge to something worth looking at is okay and maybe in its own way even better than a generic icon, but big stock photos not much more closely related to the story than a generic icon would be, which is to say "the approach taken by many web sites these days, at least some of whom should know better, would be, by myself at least, unwelcome.

Overall I find the visual appearance of this site quite well crafted. My compliments to the chef.

Re: A thumbnail directly connected to the story... (Score: 1)

by unitron@pipedot.org on 2014-05-27 08:42 (#1XD)

....and did I mention the need to be able to edit comments to put in that closing quotation mark we really were intending to include before we got distracted doublechecking the spelling of something?

Re: A thumbnail directly connected to the story... (Score: 3, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-27 12:02 (#1XG)

The ability to edit a comment for 5 minutes after posting would be very useful; unless the comment has a reply in which case it is frozen for historical accuracy.

Re: A thumbnail directly connected to the story... (Score: 2, Funny)

by koen@pipedot.org on 2014-05-27 19:08 (#1XK)

It seems you want to breed fast spelling/grammar nazis.

Re: A thumbnail directly connected to the story... (Score: 2, Funny)

by nightsky30@pipedot.org on 2014-05-27 20:40 (#1XM)

Survival of the fightest!!!

Re: A thumbnail directly connected to the story... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-27 22:51 (#1XN)

No.. that is slashdot

I was thinking more like http://stackoverflow.com/

Re: A thumbnail directly connected to the story... (Score: 1)

by terryk31@pipedot.org on 2014-05-28 13:15 (#1XZ)

stock photos... would be, by myself at least, unwelcome.
Not just you; by myself too at least. Besides the... glibness of it, It's also annoying to spend even a few brain cycles on figuring out what an image has to do with a story, and then realize it's just stock. (As someone had pointed out on /. critiquing the Beta, an actual image seems to imply it's something specific.)

OTOH well-chosen specific images work well - for example, the earlier story about the "world's coolest new watch" looks great.

But icons are fine too - they're understood as thematic (i.e. stock), but may also aid in navigation. (E.g. when scrolling rapidly, looking for a story you saw earlier.)

Choice is good (Score: 2, Insightful)

by nightsky30@pipedot.org on 2014-05-27 11:36 (#1XE)

I appreciate the option to use images from stories, and I think it has merit. I'm also thankful that the icons may still be utilized. I prefer the icons, and I'm not too picky about the variety or if they exactly match the article. On the flip side, the accompanying article images chosen by the other sites' original posters or whoever may not accurately reflect the news either. Perfection in anything may never be reached, options are excellent. :)

Re: Choice is good (Score: 1)

by dotdotdot@pipedot.org on 2014-05-27 12:51 (#1XJ)

This. Options, options, options. Most of us wouldn't be here if a certain other site had choices that weren't shoved down our throats.

Kudos (Score: 1)

by hyper@pipedot.org on 2014-05-27 12:10 (#1XH)

The layout is good.

Oh good! (Score: 1)

by useless@pipedot.org on 2014-05-29 18:02 (#1YR)

Thank you for the option to disable images/icons completely. With a smaller width browser window, the images would cover up the headline/story. Got to be a bit annoying resizing the window each time.
Good work, B