About the Size and Internet Load Time of these photos

This page last modified on 14 December, 2005

Note added 14 December, 2005: Slideshow sequences which combine photos from two or more botanic families will display a mixture of images in either of the two sizes described in this note - until the transition described here is completed.

Original version of this page posted on 25 November 2005.

Until now, almost all of the wildflower photographs on this website have been displayed in a window that looks like this:

The icons in the left-side column are for moving forward or back in a "Slide-Show" style sequence.

This window image fills less than 3/4 the width of the most common display screens in use in 2005 (i.e. at least 1024 pixels wide). I've been using this width until now because many people have still been using older/narrower screens. But all along, I've been preparing all of the photos primarily for display at full width on a screen 1024 pixels wide. That larger size lets a viewer see more detail, particularly for some of the very small details that often are important when checking a botanic key to identify the genus or species of the plant.  But the larger size is annoying to people who still use dial-up telephone connections to the Internet because the time to load the larger images is nearly double the time to load the size shown above.

I've now concluded that most people likely to be interested in using this website today have both a screen width of at least 1024 pixels, and use a broadband connection (i.e. cable or DSL).  The extra time taken to maintain duplicate files is preventing me from showing an increasing number of species photographed recently, and there is no longer a budget problem associated with using the larger disk storage space on my Internet Server computer. So, unless I hear objections from people who want to use this website regularly, I will now start switching to the larger size for all the "slide-show" sequences. This will occur one botanic Family group at a time, and the switch will take at least 2 months to complete.

Below is an example of the larger format screen. If the full height of this screen image is obscured by various "toolbars" on your computer, you may wish to suppress display of some toolbars using the View menu of your browser.

When viewing the above image on your browser within this note, the vertical scrollbar and side margin bars of the browser window will obscure part of the image. When viewing the same flower picture in the normal manner from this website, the full width of the window should be displayed.

Comments from users, like any other comments on this website, will be welcome.

-- Ken Bowles