Quick note: If you follow me, you probably noticed that I post occasional photos. Unfortunately, the default display behavior on most Mastodon instances and clients crops many images unless you click on them. I hate this, as does every other photographer here, but it's not likely to change any time soon.
You can disable this broken behavior in the Mastodon web interface by unchecking a box under display preferences.
But in any case, please be aware you might not be seeing the whole photo.
@mattblaze the 1/4 don’t know what an aspect ratio is or why it is important. They like all their movies in 4:3*. Anything else is bad writing in their opinion.
Since I main post and view on a GLITCH instance, I really hadn't noticed, but your right turning that off works so much better on a vanilla Mastodon instance.
I will continue to criticize this stupid default image cropping behavior until I've blocked every single asshole who uses it as an opportunity to tell me to go back to Twitter.
@mattblaze I think there’s a minority of posters on here with no real structural power that felt like they ran the show in this little fiefdom, because they managed to set norms in a tiny corner of the Internet when everybody else was ignoring it. Now, they’re Posting Through It ™️ as scale gradually crushes that sense of their own agency, living through the hell of their own private Eternal September. I mostly pity them at this point.
@glyph@mattblaze there's also the aftereffects of the early days of FOSS where all users were assumed to be developers. This has, imo, left a lot of FOSS users with the impression that somehow it's every user's JOB to fix any criticisms they have of the software they use… or gtfo.
Combine that with the usual toxic stew of "internet commenter" and I think you have a winning recipe for block stew.
@mattblaze@glyph Also, probably with Twitter, everyone was using a third party client, because both the official app and the web site sucked, and those might have had better cropping behaviour.
@mattblaze FYI @IceCubesApp shows the image in the original/correct aspect ratio. I don’t think I’ve changed the setting in the web interface - I only use mobile clients to interact with Mastodon.
@mattblaze I like the 16x9 norm, as I scan through a very large number of posts, so would not describe this as 'broken behaviour', let alone 'stupid'. I'll keep the box checked in my display preferences, and am quite happy to click through to any image I want to see. When posting, I am happy to have the option to crop to 16x9 or to choose the immediately-visible and then the reveal. Glad we can all choose the settings we prefer! #FediTips
@ClaireFromClare First, the default in the Mastodon web interface was changed several months ago. It no longer crops to 16x9, and so the checkbox is no longer an option.
Second, I didn't use the word "stupid", as you seem to imply I did.
So I wonder why you replied to this 6 month old and no longer relevant post of mine? What are you trying to accomplish?
@mattblaze Why the hostility, in a conversation you started? Someone just boosted your post, and you also have it pinned, implying an ongoing discussion. I thought it worth expressing my different preferences, and my appreciation of customisation. Fortunately on my browser I still see the checkbox you portrayed in your original message, so still have the option I prefer. Where you called my preference 'stupid' is in post 3 of your thread. No need to reply if you're bored with the subject.
@ClaireFromClare I didn't realize it was still pinned. Your instance may be running an old version of the Mastodon software if you're still seeing that option.
I didn't call you stupid. I called the default stupid in a thread you weren't part of. If you're offended by that, I think that says more about you than about me.
@mattblaze I can see that prof Carroll has the best intentions, but you really have some technical issues at this instance. I have 6 servers online, that I rent from different providers. They're not fully used, and I can juggle things around to make some resources available.
Maybe we can experiment with having this on a dedicated server. I don't know what a "constellation" is, but I was an engineer at Iowa when we put up the interactive classrooms.
@mattblaze well, an off campus experiment wouldn't hurt.
My own will be with https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2
the fact that it didn't wallow in Ruby means it will be at least 10x faster, and maybe 100x since it's lightweight. So lightweight, they just now added polls.
The idea of Ruby was to allow a quick mock up, not the final cut.
Ruby is fast and economical just like Visual Basic. lol
Not sure it makes any difference but I have had a hard habit several years running, of finding the proportions of the images display space that platform/app is usually reverting to, and pre crop posts to match those proprtions , so that one ‘gets the picture’ without having to click through. If they should click to see the proprtions as composed that is fine too. But for information, I don’t assume they will click thru.
I am a 60 year veteran of writing software. As such, you need to know that I have zero tolerance for folks who write code that presume to know better than you do about what you want and how you need to do it. :)
I think he’s advocating a workaround, essentially. If you preempt the site’s arbitrary cropping by cropping to ‘site size’ yourself, you solve the problem.
It’s not altering anything in the creation, you’re just editing it into a site-compatible version.
But imo it shouldn’t be a problem you have to fix. If mastodon (or any other site) is going to support artists/image posters, it needs to accommodate them, not the other way around.
@mattblaze Good reminder! I changed this setting as soon as I started using mastodon - so much nicer to see the full photo without having to click on it every time! 😁
@mattblaze since this shows up differently anyway in different mobile clients and on fediverse nodes that are not based on Mastodon, it will be an unwinnable war. Once you federate, you lose ux consistency ;(
@citrouille Yeah, but that's pretty useless to me most of the time. I make photos for a particular aspect ratio. I'm not a good enough photographer to make them for two.
@mattblaze Oh for crying out loud! I've been irritated by this since the very first day I signed up. Thank you for telling me abou this! It's bug pretending to be a feature.
@navarr No one is saying that's how very long images should be previewed. There can be a max height and max width, with the image scale down. The point is to scale it down rather than crop.
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