Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:34 UTC
If you take a look at the supplied link (warning: displays syphilitic Penis) you will see that it is a very high resolution image that take a very long time even for broadband users to load. As such for a casual visitor the page will probably be almost incompehensible, if he / she doesn't scroll down to the bottom and discover the fast-loading thumbnail and descriptive text (try). If the image was loaded underneath the image description, on the other hand, then the fast-loading thumb and description would be immediately visible to the visitor and the original size image could load in the background. Scrolling would not be required. BTW: I have uploaded such a big version because I want the users to have access to the best version available without uploading several different versions in different sizes. I think this should be in Wikimedias interest.
Current rev. 1.4pre-alpha has a limited width for the images on the image description page. If the image is wider than that limit, a "giant thumb" (default: 800px) is generated and displayed. The image is a link to the original, very-high-resolution image. Some users have concerns about the limit being a per-site setting, not a per-user one, so this might change into a user preference. There is also a discussion whether the limit should be specified as "width in pixels" or "image size in KBytes".
Why not specifying both "width in pixels" and "image size in KBytes" via user preferences?
