Attention all Screenshot of the Week Winners - Past, Present & Future

[Johnk]

Girls and guys, If you have won Screenshot of the Week, you are invited to post your winning screenshot and a few additional screenshots in the Trainz Resources Directory Gallery. You will be given a private access code so that you can rotate your pictures as time goes on. The offer is only open to weekly winners, but may be extended at a later date. Please read below to see why you should take up this offer:

• It's completely free, you can caption your screenies and change them whenever you wish.
• You can include a link to any photo site where higher resolution pics can be viewed.
• Sadly, your screenshots are not being seen by everyone. Many people like myself have dial-up, mobile or pay by the kilobyte Internet connections. For us, the opportunity to enjoy your screenshots does not exist. Most screenshots are huge and well beyond the specifications required for optimal viewing on the Internet. The Trainz Resources Directory is not only designed to run on slower Internet connections, it also allows users with monitor resolutions as low as 800 x 600 to view the site properly. By placing your screenshots in my gallery, thousands of people will be able to see them for the first time.
• Finally, the method of displaying your screenshots on the Trainz Forum is a shambles. In my directory, people will be able to see them in an orderly fashion, either by your full name, your Trainz Forum user name or via the description you supply.

I've written to Michael_Evans a few times over the past couple of months about this but my PM's and emails have gone unanswered. As I can't view your screenshots for the above-mentioned reasons, it's up to each of you to contact me by PM or the contact link on the bottom left of each page on my site. I will start publishing the shots on a first come - first served basis. The first half dozen people can work with me to give your screenshots the best possible exposure. In that regard, the directory is already being ranked number one on many Google searches. That can only improve over time.

So who's going to be first cab off the rank? Remember, it will never happen unless you make it happen!

Johnk

 

[Michael_Evans]

Hi John, I don't remember getting your PMs or emails. I hope I didn't accidentally delete them. But I do like the idea and I'm willing to help in any way I can. I could start by putting winner gets their screenshot on the Trainz Resources Directory website.

 

[Johnk]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for replying. I just PM'd you twice. One with a new message and another with a PM I sent on 5th January. Hope you get them both.

Regards

John

 

[gfisher]

Why is your website any different than anyone else's? Why would a large screenshot download any better from your site than anyone else's site?

 

[Dermmy]

Why is your website any different than anyone else's? Why would a large screenshot download any better from your site than anyone else's site?

I believe screenshots on the site will be resized to max 600 width and will be 80% compressed jpgs....

Andy

 

[Johnk]

Dermmy, the size is actually 800 x 600 but the compression is correct.

gfisher. My website is different from some Trainz web sites for many reasons. Unlike a lot of people out there, I have more experience designing web sites than I do modelling Trainz. Some modellers who own sites seem to think that because they have a lightning fast computer with a massive wide screen monitor and cable Internet that everyone else out there must have the same. The reality is, around 70% of all monitor users still set the resolution to 800 x 600. That's mainly to assist with eyesite problems which many people have. Secondly, over 90% the population still uses 4:3 ratio monitors and half of those are stil the old cathode ray tube variety. Also, 70% of the world is still running on pentium 4's or less with 512 of memory or much less. The last half dozen computers I've repaired were 256 meg of ram. Around 80% of the world's computers don't have 3D video cards and the list goes on. Finally, a very large section of the community runs io dial-up internet that downloads at 4kbs. Therefore a 250kb picture will take a minimum of 1 minute to download. For many like me, we pay for our Internet by the megabytes we use - often as high as 10 to 20 cents per meg, so each picture costs 2.5 to 5 cents to view. I hope you now realise that you are at the lucky end of the Internet scale, not the unlucky end which is forced upon us by many factors that we cannot control.

As part of my research for the Trainz Resources Driectory I visit every Trainz web site to review them for my directory listings. Some sites are almost impossible to access. Some are up to three times wider than my 1280 x 1024 monitor, others load so slowly I just have to give up. In such cases I try to check the images before I leave. Some thumbnails are 300 to 400 kb. Many postcard size photos are 500 kb plus. I've found some over 1meg. I've even found photos scanned at 600 dpi where the resolution for a Windows monitor is 96 dpi at best. These are rare instances, but they do exist.

If you've managed to read this far, I thank you. The Trainz Resourses Directory will overcome all these issues by making photos small enough both in physical size and bandwidth demands to allow them to be viewed on the slowest internet connections with some degree of success. People with reasonably good machines will love it.

Before you comment, let me just add that most modern cars can travel at over 180kph, yet speed limits on open roads are still to 100-110 kph. It's not good practice to cater for the biggest and the best, we should always cater for the average until the average becomes a minority. I'm happy because my car chugs along quite nicely at 100k.