Web Standards And Thumbnails?

[Lee]

I was wondering if you folks worked towards any type of 'web standard' when it came to the resizing of thumbnails to use on your sites?

Ive been reading about web standards for the last 10 or so minutes and it would appear that the 'standard' concensus for thumbnails is around 150px on the longest side, do you think this holds true industry wide or not?

I have also seen that several organizations have tried setting a web standard for thumbnail sizes but these orgs have typically failed at producing a true standard.

Do you think there should be a standard for thumbnail sizes when it comes to clicking on a picture to display the larger, full-sized image?

Regards,

Lee

[tim460]

Standards might make things "easier" in that everything is generic, but I think there are other considerations regarding design (both function and aesthetics) that require customization of thumbnails. I base this only on viewing many artist's websites and designing sites for my own paintings, where using thumbnails is often or always the main component of the site. Maybe because it's artists' sites, the more unique and creative the better. But I see that adult web design is getting much, much better, some incredibly inventive things happening by really creative designers in this genre, too.

[Lee]

Tim,

Dont most artists opt to go for vignettes as oppose to thumbnails though on their sites?

Certainly the gallery owners i know who have an online presence tend to use larger images as oppose to thumbs to showcase their works.

Regards,

Lee

[tim460]

Maybe I miscommunicated. The thumbnails on the sites I am referring to (most all sites) are used as links to larger images of the entire work of art. By vignettes, do you mean crops, and if so what size? If the size of thumbnails, yes, I often see this. If larger crops as the only representation of a work of art, I don't see that much except as an intro to the site.

Really, it's all over the place and likely changing, too. Earlier in this decade, most gallery sites would not post an image larger than a few inches (forgot but about 300 to 400px or so widest dimension). I think the reason was to prevent copies from being made and used in a variety of ways without permission from the artist(s). Who knows. Some sites still do this conservative bit.

Gradually that rule was broken, and sometimes the pics are huge. Some sites have pics that enlarge almost filling the monitor. The MOMA has had some inventive designs for a few exhibitions. But that's MOMA.