Since this blog began in 2007 I’ve had thumbnails to show a smaller version of a photo so things fit in the space the blog provided. All of my older posts currently work this way – click a thumbnail and get the larger version in a lightbox with a caption. This came with limitations though. First, the visitors to this site (unless on a cell phone) have to click on a photo to see the larger version of it (which always looks better). Second, I had to create all the thumbnails and the larger versions too – which adds to the time it takes to make a post. Below is the newer way I’m thinking of doing these things for everything that isn’t a panorama, or maybe even the vertical images. Oh, and no sidebar on an individual post, maybe.
Fall Foliage at the Beaver Pond in Gatineau Park (Purchase)
The photograph above is from my trip in October to Québec’s Gatineau Park and some of the great fall foliage I saw there. As it isn’t a blog post in itself, I thought I’d use it to illustrate an image without a thumbnail. Clicking on the image now takes you to my Image Library instead of to a larger version. I figure I’ll still display some panorama images with a “click to enlarge” like before, as those are sometimes still a bit small at 950px wide.
If you think this new way of doing things is some manner of travesty let me know in a comment!
I think lightboxes etc. are on the way out – at least for blogs & photography websites. I still like “gallery views” where I can browse from one photo to the next, but with mobile you definitely want a photo as large as possible in the post – so why not on the desktop as well? I rarely click on an image to “open it larger” nowadays…
I would mostly agree with you on lightboxes – I don’t often click to view them, though I do tend to view your gallery views in your posts. I think I’ll still use a lightbox for the panoramas, which are not easy to display at the best of times. These 950 wide images seem to work pretty well, I’ll have to experiment what is the best height for the vertical images.
Interesting. I’ve never used light boxes for image display.
With a site layout that readily accommodates large images such as yours there is no need to! Until recently mine would on handle something around 600px wide which was a bit underwhelming on a desktop computer.
I am not happy with the current theme on my website. It’s one of a few that support that IndieWeb plugins properly, so I use it.
What functionality do their plugins have that other, more widely supported, plugins don’t cover?