Lazy – or Now a Feature?

My friend Alfred Thompson posted a little message on Facebook today.  It was a comparison of blogs on the Teach 100 where our blogs were listed side by side.  On Facebook, it looks like this.

I had joked that if you squint, you could see a couple of stars on the US flag but one big maple leaf on the Canadian flag.

In reality, it’s a much bigger image.

It’s just that Facebook doesn’t display a page from screen side to screen side.  Instead, there are three or four columns so that the messages occupy only part of the screen.

The same thing happens with WordPress.

In the days when I was creating an electronic newsletter by hand, I would actually use Snagit or Photoshop and manually resize the image to fit in the space allotted.  I would make it as big as possible (in my case is was 556 pixels) so that the smaller image would retain as much detail as possible.  An added benefit is that the image is smaller and therefore would load quicker.

We don’t do that much any more (unless the original image is really, really, really big).  Instead, we let the WordPress’ of the world do the resizing for us on the fly.  That way, it’s exactly the optimal viewing size on the screen.

What if you really do want to look at the original image though?

I’ve blogged before that I’ll use a browser extension like Hover Free to do the task for me.

That’s all fine and dandy if you have the time and inclination to install the extension.  If you don’t, then consider just using you the functionality built into your browser.

In yesterday’s blog post, I included a really big image of the Weavesilk drawing.  With Firefox, I can see the original and bigger image just by right clicking on the image and choosing the view option from the pop up menu.

Or, with Google Chrome, I’ll open it in a new tab.

Neat, sweet, and you’ve got the chance to see the original in all its beauty and detail.

There was a time when I would have consider that the work of a person who doesn’t know how to work with images or was just too lazy to do it “right”.

Now, with higher bandwidth speeds, I tend to think of it more of a feature.  People get to read your original post with the smaller image but if they want to see the original bigger one with all the detail, they have that option as well.  Where it really shines is with infographics.

What do you think?  Lazy?  Or a Feature?