Comments on: Thumbnail previews of web sites: an overview http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thumbnail-previews-of-web-sites-an-overview/ Supporting eLearning and research by tinkering with the web Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:27:53 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: tomgidden http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thumbnail-previews-of-web-sites-an-overview/#comment-10 tomgidden Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:58:56 +0000 http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thumbnail-previews-of-web-sites-an-overview/#comment-10 Personally, I'm not a fan of these thumbnails, but that's just me! Anyway, if you're generating your own using something like khtml2png, it might be worth checking out this post on my blog: http://gidden.net/tom/2006/05/29/lcd-resampling/ http://gidden.net/junk/lcdresample/ Sure, there's not much you can do to improve legibility at such a small size, but I find it can improve thumbnail quality slightly on standard LCDs, while being barely perceptible on a CRT. Unfortunately, it also limits the thumbnail to non-lossy formats like PNG, as I assume JPEG cruftiness will spoil the effect. I do my avatar photos, favicons and other similar thumbnails with it, and I think it helps. (I've also just realised that my sole contributions to The Ancient Geeks is blog spam. Whoops) Personally, I’m not a fan of these thumbnails, but that’s just me! Anyway, if you’re generating your own using something like khtml2png, it might be worth checking out this post on my blog:

http://gidden.net/tom/2006/05/29/lcd-resampling/
http://gidden.net/junk/lcdresample/

Sure, there’s not much you can do to improve legibility at such a small size, but I find it can improve thumbnail quality slightly on standard LCDs, while being barely perceptible on a CRT. Unfortunately, it also limits the thumbnail to non-lossy formats like PNG, as I assume JPEG cruftiness will spoil the effect. I do my avatar photos, favicons and other similar thumbnails with it, and I think it helps.

(I’ve also just realised that my sole contributions to The Ancient Geeks is blog spam. Whoops)

]]> By: Martin Poulter http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thumbnail-previews-of-web-sites-an-overview/#comment-8 Martin Poulter Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:29:17 +0000 http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thumbnail-previews-of-web-sites-an-overview/#comment-8 Thanks Dan, I was just trying not to over-sell the value of thumbnail previews. I think they're valuable, even though I can see people arguing that you don't learn anything from a tiny, downsampled picture. I think it's useful to know in advance if a site has c2007 web design or c1997 web design. If you think I should sell this angle more, then that's a positive that I welcome. Thanks Dan,
I was just trying not to over-sell the value of thumbnail previews. I think they’re valuable, even though I can see people arguing that you don’t learn anything from a tiny, downsampled picture. I think it’s useful to know in advance if a site has c2007 web design or c1997 web design.
If you think I should sell this angle more, then that’s a positive that I welcome.

]]> By: danbri http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thumbnail-previews-of-web-sites-an-overview/#comment-4 danbri Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:15:01 +0000 http://ancientgeeks.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/thumbnail-previews-of-web-sites-an-overview/#comment-4 """you don’t learn about the site except how “professional” it looks, and that’s not a reliable indicator of the quality of its educational content.""" I'm tempted to argue the contrary, though it depends on how much weight you put on "indicator". I'd guess, despite many good looking sites that are full of nonsense, that there is some-correlation between effort having gone into looks, and effort having gone into content. Especially if the site has already passed some basic level of folly-filtering (eg. was blogged by a friend, or under a trusted del.icio.us tag, or linked from a trusted catalogue). “”"you don’t learn about the site except how “professional” it looks, and that’s not a reliable indicator of the quality of its educational content.”"”

I’m tempted to argue the contrary, though it depends on how much weight you put on “indicator”. I’d guess, despite many good looking sites that are full of nonsense, that there is some-correlation between effort having gone into looks, and effort having gone into content. Especially if the site has already passed some basic level of folly-filtering (eg. was blogged by a friend, or under a trusted del.icio.us tag, or linked from a trusted catalogue).

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