Browsers

[Deb]

This will be boring. Ignore it unless you're a geek – not a Fountain Pen Geek – but a geek. When I edit my photos I save them as .gifs because it's a lossless file format. I suppose I could change to something else but I thought that .gifs were acceptable everywhere. I use Firefox and for some reason – I am unable to discover what – my .gif images in Fountain Pen Geeks do not always show up. Sometimes they are replaced by a placeholder. It's clear that that is not the case for anyone else as no one has said they can't see my images.

Because this problem seemed insuperable (to me at least) I dumped Firefox and began using Opera. I persisted with it for a month or so. It showed all images so that was fine. What wasn't so good was that Opera turned flaky every now and again and dropped tabs without warning. It didn't happen often, but it happened often enough to make Opera unusable.

I tried Pale Moon which I found to be a splendid browser but its dedicated search engine is DuckDuckGo which is absolutely abysmal. You can't change it because that's how they make their money.

There are a few other browsers, including Brave which I have tried before. It gets a little tiresome, setting each one up. I won't use Chrome because it's spyware and I am determined not to be spied upon – or at least to minimise the amount of spying that I must endure.

For the first time since the early 90s, I'm using a Microsoft browser: Edge. It seems okay. It's adequately fast and doesn't appear to have many problems. I regret not having Firefox which is undoubtedly the best of them all but I won't to be bullied into using .jpgs.

[azkid]

PNG file format is lossless and seems to be well supported.

Firefox has a setting related to animated gifs. Hard for me to say what the root cause is, though, until I could look at specific examples of it not working.

Edge seems to be a reasonably decent browser whenever I've used it.

[arrow]

[arrow]

I'm in Firefox and I just had to try.

[Deb]

Thank you, azkid. I have used the .png format before and might do so again, if Edge proves unsatisfactory and I revert to Firefox. It's a strange glitch, this one.

[sgphoto]

You might find that saving your images as jpegs (jpg) solves your problems. Gifs can be somewhat problematic in certain places, but I've never had problems with jpegs anywhere. I shoot Jpegs on my phone camera, then reduced in size and dpi for online use. That way I have a full size and an internet size. In my professional life using Hassleblads, I save files in Tiff, but then the files may run into 200-300 mgs which is certainly not needed except in professional applications or large print jobs.

Try jpegs. And InfranView is a free photo viewer that can do just about everything and is easy to learn.

Also, try the Brave Browser. It's based on Chrome, but uses far less resources, cleaner interface, loads faster, and in the seven months I've been using it it's never crashed on 3 computers.

I regularly test it against Firefox and Chrome and it always comes out on top. I hope this helps.

[Deb]

Perhaps I was unclear. I won't use jpegs because they are lossy. That's the whole basis of my difficulty. (I'm sure I said that somewhere...)
I also mentioned that I have already used Brave.

[sgphoto]

Sorry, I see where you used Brave. May I ask what dpi you're shooting at and what size you need the final image to be? What are the applications for your images? Print, online, email,?

[Deb]

Generally, 900 pixels across. Online in a variety of places and email.

[ethernautrix]

If you shoot jpg at a larger size, then resize (not compress), would that work?

[Deb]

If you shoot jpg at a larger size, then resize (not compress), would that work?

Certainly, but it's still a jpeg and subject to deterioration. I just prefer to use lossless images.

[FredRydr]

...it's still a jpeg and subject to deterioration....

?? I don't think I want to know. It's bad enough with all the family negatives and prints going back to the '30s, stuffed in storage bins in the garage where summertime temperatures reach 40C/100+F.

[Deb]

Jpgs are okay until you edit them, then artefacts can appear. Mostly it's not bad enough to matter but with a few re-edits you can begin to lose detail. Your saved photos are fine, Fred.

[ethernautrix]

Do you use an app to resize AND to add a watermark (or tag) your photos ("copyright [name]")? I'd like to use a good one that does both.

[silverlifter]

I would recommend that you persevere with Firefox, especially if privacy is a concern. An up-to-date Firefox with extensions like U-block, Privacy Badger et al is about as solid as you can get without going to Tor.

Mozilla has some tips if images aren't rendering correctly: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...mages-not-show

I guess that you are running on Windows, though, and that is going to compound the issue. Good luck!

[Deb]

Why is Windows going to compound the issue?

[Deb]

Do you use an app to resize AND to add a watermark (or tag) your photos ("copyright [name]")? I'd like to use a good one that does both.

I do my editing with Photoshop Essentials these days. Used to be the full Photoshop but I can't justify the expense. I don't add a watermark but Essentials does provide that capability. I'm sure there are some of the freeware graphics packages and photo editors which will do these things. I just haven't looked at them for a while so I've lost touch.

[silverlifter]

Why is Windows going to compound the issue?

For a number of reasons. One, it is difficult to dig into the internals of closed source systems, so debugging is going to be much more difficult. Two, as the guide notes, Windows uses backslashes for paths and that can prove problematic. Three, the Firefox Windows port has not been without its issues over the years (see first point).

[ethernautrix]

Do you use an app to resize AND to add a watermark (or tag) your photos ("copyright [name]")? I'd like to use a good one that does both.

I do my editing with Photoshop Essentials these days. Used to be the full Photoshop but I can't justify the expense. I don't add a watermark but Essentials does provide that capability. I'm sure there are some of the freeware graphics packages and photo editors which will do these things. I just haven't looked at them for a while so I've lost touch.

Ah. Thanks, Deb. I have the same program, but I hardly use that laptop anymore since becoming smartphone- and tablet-dependent. Heh.

[Deb]

You'll be a Linux aficionado, I assume. I've used dos since the 80s and Windows ever since it came along. Computers of various kinds are how I have made my living since the late 70s. I've used Macs, Linux and FreeBSD. What you are suggesting has nothing at all to do with the problem I have brought up. All this favouring of one system over another is so much hogwash and snobbishness.

In relation to what you suggested earlier, all the major browsers use such extensions as blockers and anti-trackers.