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[bookpeg Friend bookpegJoin date: October 2008Posts: 419Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 82 Thanked: 10 times in 1 posts]

#157717

Hi, I’ve noticed that any article i add to the front page shows the text with a reduced quality version of the first image on the page – it seems to be producing low qulity thumbnails – how do i stop this as it looks bad,

thanks

p.s also – I’ve inserted an image and a small amount of text before a read more divider, then chosen ‘hide into’ in the article paramters so that in a category blog layout, it shows a small image and intro text for each article, and the intro text is slightly different from what appears on the page (for seo) this is what i’ve been doing with the first problem i queried you with – the front page then shows a reduced quality version of the image – another problem is that when that image is fed into the front page, it is no longer linked to the article, even though the image link is specified in the article, and the image link does work when fed into category blog layout … the front page seems to strip the link from the image and reduce its quality …

any help greatly appreciated

tom

[bookpeg Friend bookpegJoin date: October 2008Posts: 419Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 82 Thanked: 10 times in 1 posts]

#367991

any ideas?

[Sherlock Friend SherlockJoin date: September 2014Posts: 11453Downloads:0Uploads:88 Thanks: 221 Thanked: 2478 times in 2162 posts]

#368410

Dear bookpeg,

The images on the frontpage articles would be resized before rendering,you can try as following to get rid of this feature
Go to the file of templatesja_sulfurhtmlcom_contentfrontpagedefault_item.php ,looking for these codes
[PHP]
<?php
global $mainframe;
require_once (JPATH_SITE.DS.’templates’.DS.$mainframe->getTemplate().DS.’ja_templatetools_1.5.php’);
$image = JA_Tools::extractImage ($this->item, true, $this->imageWidth, $this->imageHeight);
?>
[/PHP] [PHP]<div class=”img-desc clearfix”>
<?php echo $image; ?>
</div>
[/PHP] Just remove these codes.

1 user says Thank You to Sherlock for this useful post

1. flightparties

[Janice W Davis Friend Janice W DavisJoin date: September 2014Posts: 105Downloads:0Uploads:16 Thanks: 14 Thanked: 2 times in 1 posts]

#368964

This topic has been discussed over and over again. The problem is that it automatically creates a thumbnail and uses that thumbnail on the frontpage. Then in the orginal article, if a width and height are set for the image – the module will automatically resize the frontpage thumbnail (not the original image) and that is what creates the pixelated image. This is a DESIGN FLAW/BUG. Resizing a thumbnail up to a larger size should not happen.

This has been discussed for at least 18months. When are we going to get a proper fix for this?

My customers keeps having this problem over and over again – as a work around I go in and remove the width and height in the article. This means however that the small thumbnail is displayed on the front page and the only size of the image in the article is the orginal size of the image. In other words they are restricted in the sizes that they can use for the image.

The code fix above doesn’t fix the problem either as it will just display the image size.

[Phill Moderator PhillJoin date: February 2014Posts: 7013Downloads:40Uploads:77 Thanks: 917 Thanked: 2206 times in 1818 posts]

#368975

I do not see it as a bug, more that users do not understand how it is supposed to work.

An if statement could be included to detect if an image size has been used in the code then render the full size image but I really do not see the point. The developers have gone to a lot of effort to make a nice page layout for the frontpage and all adding specific sizes is doing is breaking that layout. If you need a different size for all your images then just ask and we will try and help. If you do not want the auto resize feature then switch it off as per the above. I do not think having both would bea good idea.

[Janice W Davis Friend Janice W DavisJoin date: September 2014Posts: 105Downloads:0Uploads:16 Thanks: 14 Thanked: 2 times in 1 posts]

#368987

What developers have to remember is that if the customer cannot understand it, it is not obvious, then it is a problem. Customers don’t have the same technological abilities as developers. Customers are the ones that pay for it, if the solution is not easy for them then its a problem. This is something that I encounter again and again. We as developers have to remember this – we are supposed to make their lives easier.

In this instance my customer is one of the more techy ones that I have, but numerous times I have explained the nuances of this “design feature” and each time she updates the article for the front page we encounter this problem again. I don’t want to hack the code as then it removes the option of resizing the image in the full article, and later when we upgrade it we have to redo the hack. This has has been discussed numerous times as seen below. An option to turn on/off the resizing or stopping a resize of a small thumbnail to a larger image would prevent this problem.

http://www.joomlart.com/forums/topic/front-page-article-images-very-poor-quality/
http://www.joomlart.com/forums/topic/auto-resizing-on-front-page-issue/

[Phill Moderator PhillJoin date: February 2014Posts: 7013Downloads:40Uploads:77 Thanks: 917 Thanked: 2206 times in 1818 posts]

#369002

As a Developer member you can turn off the resizing and use the JA Thumbnail plugin instead. You can then decide whether you want it or not.

The resized thumbnail feature IMHO is easier for most people. If you go the other way and do not have auto layout as many template clubs do then layouts often look a mess. If you have it some complain that it is not flexible enough for them. It is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t

I cannot see how JA could make it easier. You simply insert you image, do not put any size attributes in and it does all the work for you. How can that be any simpler? If you use the aformentioned plugin then it does the work and you can add a simple attribute to turn off the feature.

[Janice W Davis Friend Janice W DavisJoin date: September 2014Posts: 105Downloads:0Uploads:16 Thanks: 14 Thanked: 2 times in 1 posts]

#369008

Thanks Phill for your quick reply.

Ok maybe there is something I’m missing. When you say “As a As a Developer member you can turn off the resizing” what do you mean? Where can I turn it off? Where is the ja_thumbnail plugin? It’s not listed with the other extensions.

What are you calling the resized thumbnail feature? Is it:
a) the creation of the thumbnail – yes nice feature
b) the resizing of the thumbnail to match the article’s image dimensions? – Not a great feature to do so automatically. Can break layout and results in pixelated/blurry images.

The other thing is that some of the editors will automatically populate the height and width of the image in the article with it’s actual size. eg JCE. So when this happens it automatically increases the size of the thumbnail image on the front page. Maybe the problem is that the front page takes it’s width and height from the article instead of the width and height of the thumbnail.

Janice

[Phill Moderator PhillJoin date: February 2014Posts: 7013Downloads:40Uploads:77 Thanks: 917 Thanked: 2206 times in 1818 posts]

#369014

The feature in JCE to populate the dimensions can be disabled in JCE (at least it used to be that way).

By turning off the resizing I mean by applying the above modification to the code. I know, if you update the template you hae to re-apply it but how often do you update a template.

The JA Thumbnail plugin can be found here – http://www.joomlart.com/forums/downloads.php?do=cat&id=353

The creation of the thumb is great, how you use it is up to you or the template design. The blurry pics you mention is simply because people do not read the docs or use JCE and add dimensions where they are not required. JCE is at fault here for adding them IMO. There is not a lot more I can say. The system has been in use for many years with frontpage overrides that JA provide. Most users are more than happy with the system and it is often why many use templates such as the JA ones.

[bookpeg Friend bookpegJoin date: October 2008Posts: 419Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 82 Thanked: 10 times in 1 posts]

#371412

so, thanks for your replies, and thanks mr Davis for adding some info … if i delete those code snippets is it going to cause problems if and when i update this template? Also, is it normal for the image url to be stripped out when it’s fed into the front page?, and is there any way round that?

Thanks

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