“Help! The forum does not fit on my ‘puter! I have to scroll back and forth to
read!”
Very common problem on bulletin boards (forums, message boards) all over the
internet. This happens when somebody posts an image that is wider than the
screen resolution. Most people use 800 x 600 pixels screen resolution. You can
switch your ‘puter to 1024 x 768 or even larger, but then everything becomes too
small to see.
Pixels are the numbers you see when you hover the little arrow on a thumbnail
picture in your “My Pictures”. You will see something like
“Dimensions: 1234 x 567”, and “Size: 999 KB”. The Kilobytes size does not
matter. The 1234 is how many little grains of color there are across the width of
the picture. That’s what you need to keep down.
The problem affects one page at the time. After a number of posts on a new
thread, the forum starts a second page. That page will be normal until somebody
posts an oversize image on that one also.
Often, the offending image is in somebody’s automatic signature blurb, and they
may not even be aware of the problem themselves. That mucks up every page
they post on!
So a simple fix is to teach everybody in the world to PLEASE resize their photos
and other images to... oh... I like to use maximum 500 pixels wide. That leaves
room for the left margin of the forum where our names are.
Here is a photo that is excessively wide:
Here is the same picture, resized to around 500 pixels:
So now you wonder: Why did you not have to scroll to read this post? That is because I “scroll proofed” it. I simply hit “enter” after every line I typed. Except this paragraph, which serves to demonstrate the problem.
It is easy to resize photos. I use Paint, which apparently comes with Windows.
RESIZING PHOTOS:
Find the photo in My Pictures (or where ever you keep it).
Right Click on it.
On the menu, put the cursor on Open With,
then click on Paint.
At the top of the screen, click on Image,
then click on Stretch/Skew.
In the box, the Stretch Horizontal will say 100 % and be highlighted.
Type in a different number (100 goes away by itself), say 25.
Hit the Tab key and type in 25 in Vertical also. You don't need Skew.
Click OK.
What you see now is the new size. That is what it will look like on somebody's
screen.
If it fits your screen with room to spare, click on File, Save As, type in a new
name and hit Save. (I just add “P” for Paint and the percentage number I used,
like this: If the photo was named “Photo of bus” it becomes “Photo of bus P25”)
If you want a different size, start over with a different percentage. With some
experience you will guess a suitable percentage on the first try almost every
time.
I know perfectly well that this is going to be the usual mess as people reply to
this post and forget to hit “enter” after every line they type. The easy way to do it
is to compose your reply in Word, with the formatting symbols on, and then
paste it into the forum.
I have no idea what’s gonn’a happen next, but I thought I’d try explaining the
problem. Feel free to PM me.
For what it's worth, I have always had to scroll, even with the "fix" on my home computer set to 800x600. 
, but which link (on the page your link lands) is the correct one to down load?
. . . and thanks! I'm gonna check into that fer meself! 
Linear Mode
