Thumbnails: How much is too much?

[shensyel]

I have about 170 pictures, the thumbnails for which are about 5kb each (average). Anybody have any suggestions for the maximum amount to put in a single gallery page? The more the merrier since that's fewer galleries I have to create, but I don't want to overload a page and have it take forever to load in a browser...

[jpmoriarty]

i ususally reckon that a page over 100k is too big, so i guess that would be about 20 pictures per page.

You could consider using php or asp to dynamically generate the pages for you, which would mean you only making 1 page and it automcatically doing all the rest for you.

[starrwriter]

Originally posted by shensyel
I have about 170 pictures, the thumbnails for which are about 5kb each (average). Anybody have any suggestions for the maximum amount to put in a single gallery page? The more the merrier since that's fewer galleries I have to create, but I don't want to overload a page and have it take forever to load in a browser...

You could make the thumbnails smaller in width and optimize them if they're GIF or reduce the quality percentage if they're JPG. If the thumbnails are small enough, you should be able to fit all of them on 3 pages that will load in a reasonable time.

[nkaisare]

Depending on what type of pictures they are, choice of jpeg may be more pragmatic than gif. If these are pictures (photos), jpegs are better. If these are drawings or something like that, gifs are preferable. You may actually be able to reduce size of each thumbnail.

Something like 16 to 20 thumbnails per page is a good compromise between size of each page and number of pages. Thus, each page will be about 100 KB, and you will have about 10 pages.

Also use interlaced or progressive pictures so that people can get an idea of what the pictures look like even before the entire picture is downloaded.

[Aronya1]

Assuming these images have some sort of relevance to each other, you could put them all on a single page (after optimizing for size, please) within a simple table. Place an anchor at the appropriate locations, and a link table at the top of the page, so the user can "jump" to the desired location. I have an example here: www.imitatorsofrocklegends.com/impersonators.htm (not my finest work, by the way, but it's what the client wanted). If you need more info, let me know.

For image optimization, I have been using Irfanview for years now. Very fast, stable, and FREE! It will make 80 x 80 pixel thumbs almost instantly. File size from 1 - 3k.

Hope this helps.
Aronya1
aronya1@aronyanet.com