We have introduced a new feature to help users with slow internet. You can turn this new feature on by going to your Profile and turning on the option under Low Data Mode at the bottom of this page.
This will load lower-resolution thumbnails in the Latest view which shows the grid of thumbnails and should cut your load times nearly in half!
Note that this will only work on high-resolution displays (4k displays, iPhones, iPads, iMacs, Macbooks, etc.). On lower-resolution displays the smaller thumbnails are already being loaded, so you are already getting the fastest load times possible.
We have also made some other tweaks to help with load times that will make the site load faster for everyone and you should see a significant improvement even if you don’t turn this option on!
When you visit a topic, the poster’s image may still take some time to load on slower connections because it depends on how large of a file the user posted. We may reconsider maximum file sizes in order to help overall load times for everyone. I’m leaning towards a max file size of 5mb instead of 10mb, let me know if you have any thoughts/concerns around this.
FYI I did some research/testing and was able to leave the 10mb upload limit in place so that users don’t have to worry about resizing to anything too specific, but the software will now automatically downsize the image to 3mb to make load times faster. So we are now optimized to the max, the way it works looks like this:
User uploads any file up to 10mb
System resizes this file to 3mb and this is what is displayed in the lightbox
Thumbnails are generated for the latest and category pages that are only 345px
A small version is created for the actual post that is max 690x500 so the post loads quickly even on slow connections
So if you are on a really slow connection everything should load quite quickly and the only time it will be somewhat slow is when you view the image in the lightbox which displays the full 3mb file.
Please let me know if you notice any problems with this!
David : thanks for addressing the slow loading issue. However, having ticked the new Low Data feature I still cannot load the previews, seemingly at all - I have waited 5 minutes without success, though the main images come up fine. I have logged out and removed all NPN cookies to no effect either. I’ve also tried in both Dark and Light modes.
Am on a hi res MacBook Pro, Catalina and the latest Firefox and Safari. My average speed is 66 Mbps. Is there anything else you could suggest I try ?
Does this only happen if you have the low data mode turned on? You shouldn’t need this if you have 66mbps connection, that is extremely fast and you won’t notice a difference.
David ; no, it was happening for a few weeks before I turned on the feature. I’ve turned it off again just to recheck but still the same - I get either the Preview Loading message or the logos where the previews should be. About a month ago I had some loading apart from the very latest images, since when nothing at all. I only installed Catalina a short while back but I think it was all working fine at that time, as far as I can recall. Could Catalina be the issue though ?
Does refreshing the page bring the thumbnails back? I was having this problem occasionally but in my case I think it’s from being on a slow connection.
I’m running Catalina without issue. My download speed is 40mbps and I’m not seeing any delays. Wish I could come up with a solution, but wanted to rule out Catalina unless there is some security function you have in Catalina that is not allowing downloading images on the NPN pages. Seems unlikely, but something to maybe look into
Thanks, Keith, for that. I guess it must be something on my computer causing the problem but, as this happens only on NPN, I have no idea what. I doubt it is a security setting ( I have changed nothing for ages ) but I will investigate as far as I can.
David : I have done a screenshot though I can only see the code - hope you can create something from it or do I need to do anything this end ? Will just look for any private message from now on - and thanks for taking the trouble :
Thanks Ian, actually can you right click on any of the messages and select Export Visible messages to > Clipboard? Make sure you are doing this on the page where you are not seeing the thumbnails.
