On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 7:36 AM, Ariel T. Glenn ariel@wikimedia.org wrote:
So there are some things we could change:
- We could generate and keep only certain sizes, tossing the rest.
Heck yes. Generate some standard sizes at upload time and let the browser scale if a funny size is demanded. Modern browsers scale photos nicely, not like the nearest-neighbor ugliness from 2002.
This'll simplify our thumbnail-serving architecture, remove some DoS vectors, and if we pick the next size up makes things look better when zooming or on high-density screens.
Downside: diagrams and charts done as PNGs or JPGs might not look as sharp at non-standard sizes.
We should also start considering serving SVGs directly to supporting browsers, so they always look nice at any size -- and at any zoom level. (Downside of this: this means we have to start thinking about size and rendering efficiency in SVGs -- don't use a 6 megabyte super-detailed map for something that's going to be shown at 200px most of the time!)
-- brion