I just went to go make a list of my Firefox extensions, and was reminded that I refreshed my Firefox installation last month, which removed all extensions. So I am now only using the built-in privacy features although I am running that in strict mode.
So I guess this slowness is not related to privacy extensions. I should go and re-enable those…
it does seem slower later in the evening but i am rarely on much later than right now (11 eastern time) so i don’t know beyond that.
This was really bad last night and today. I have a slow internet connection, but it’s no slower than it was a few months ago, and this has gotten significantly worse. Like maybe the photos are being loaded at a higher resolution than they used to be?
does this help?
I have also noticed this issue intermittently. Typically I get impatient and just open the observation in a new window and then it loads much quicker. I know this isn’t a real solution but maybe it can help tie the delay to something in the way the “Identify” screen pulls in images that is different than the regular observation page.
I’ve noticed too that it seems to open faster in a new window or at least then I can move on and let it load in the background
Thanks folks, I’ll put this in my weekly support report.
So, asking our devs, here’s how photos work on Identify:
If you have a smallish monitor, we load medium size images by default in the Identify modal (pop-up), and large size photos if you have a larger monitor.
So, if you have a smaller monitor, you have already loaded medium sized photos in grid view and when you use the modal, the browser is displaying images you have already loaded, making that image display quite speedy. If the original size is large, and you have a slower internet connection, it will, by comparison, seem to load significantly slower than the medium sized photos you have already loaded. We don’t think there are any bugs or issues on our end, a lot of it depends on how big the original file is and the speed of your internet service.
One thing we could do is, if we detect you are using a smaller monitor, load large size photos rather than original size ones when you zoom. Thoughts? Personally when I zoom I want to know I’m seeing the largest available image, but I have a pretty robust internet connection.
The monitor I typically use is 14". I imagine that would be considered smaller, yes?
I personally would much rather have the ‘large’ than original photos for the ID page. Maybe allow another pathway to click through in the observation page to the huge photos. But my internet will never be fast enough that i want to download a 3 mb photo every time i want to look at the leaves on a tree or something. And i know elsewhere in the world the internet is even less reliable than here. Thanks for all that great info.
Maybe. It depends more on the resolution than physical size.
just out of curiosity, is there a reason why “original size” seems to be smaller than the actual size of the photo that was originally loaded? i can understand that maybe the system reduces the size of very large photos to save space and bandwidth or something like that, but why still call it “original size”? (some people might be under a false impression that the files stored on iNat have higher resolution than they actually do.)
just as an example, if i pull up this “original size” photo (https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/33036865?size=original), the metadata says this photo should be 2736x3648px. but if i view this 100% on my screen, the “original size” photo is only about 2/3rds as wide than my 2160px wide screen. if i copy and paste the image into a image manipulation program, it tells me that the image i pasted in is 1536x2048px. 1536 / 2160 ~= 70%. a 2736x3648px image would be in the neighborhood of 3.5MB. so something with half the area would put the image size in your 1.5-2.4MB range.
Correct, iNat reduces all larger images to no bigger than 2048 x 2048 pixels. “Original” might not be the best name. Any suggestions?
“maximum size”?
Eeep! I’ve just noticed the “View full size photo” on the Identify page! Awesome :-) Thank you thank you thank you! Thrilled to tiny bits!
Please could we have the “View full size photo” option on obs as well. It opens the pic really fast (compared to the modal which takes forever), and one can zoom in even before the pic has finished loading (which one can’t do on the modal which takes forever). Also, one can zoom above 100% which is needed a lot (by me, anyway). ALSO, it stays zoomed to the place you left it when comparing with other pictures, unlike the modal which has wandered off to the top or bottom and one has to find one’s place again.
ctrl-right click and choose open in new tab. Gives you the full size image and much better control on zoom level (with the ctrl +/- zoom of the browser page). If you open in a new window, then you can easily alt-tab between that zoomed image and some other open file such as a pdf or webpage to compare features
Yes I know. But twould be fab to have the button since it’s possible and we have it on the Identify modal anyway. You can also use mousewheel-click on most browsers.
I would go with Max(2048x2048) for the name. Would answer a question before it is asked.
I haven’t noticed it lately. I also have a better internet connection now so maybe it was just on our end.
