pictures

[shoneill]

Why is it so awkward to post inline pictures in posts?

I'm sure this has been asked before, but posting in the "images only" thread or posting with an attachment and then editing seems a bit long-winded to me.

Is this a limit of the forum or is it done for other reasons...

It's possible to embed a (binary-file) picture in HTML text is it not?

Shane

[Jaegen]

I'm by no means an expert, but I think the issue is that the system doesn't choose a location for the image until after you post it as an attachment, and you can't link to it until you know its location.  This is a limitation of NI's chosen forum system ("lithium") though, since other forum systems seem to work around this, I think by adding an abstraction layer, and giving message attachments ID numbers to link to instead.

Embedding the image within the HTML of the message would be cool, but would probably prevent linking to the image in other messages afterwards.

This is certainly a valid feature request/improvement though - it took me a while to figure out why all these messages with images in them also had a not saying the message had been edited (of course, I could have done a quick search to find out why, if I wasn't so lazy ...)

Jaegen

[tst]

Actually, I think Molly said once upon a time that they could get the attachments to appear immediately, but that they had no way of distinguishing between file types, so images would appear fine and any other attachments would appear as invalid images.

I agree that this is a rather annoying limitation of the Lithium system - if I can figure out the address to the image before posting (and I can - I usually embed images without editing), so can the software which does the posting. It can hold the image in temporary memory until the post is submitted and then give it a real URL.

Of course, it should also be able to allow you to preview your posts without losing attachments, so I guess we can conclude that it's not perfect.

[TCPlomp]

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if I can figure out the address to the image before posting (and I can - I usually embed images without editing),

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I know there is some methodology, could you explain the method you discovered?

Ton

[tst]

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@TonP wrote:

I know there is some methodology, could you explain the method you discovered?

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Well, the trick is that the post numbers are sequential per board and the attachment URL format is constant (it's http://forums.ni.com/attachments/ni/BOARD Num/Post Num/1/FILE), so all you need to do is to find out the number of the most recent post in the board (you can do it by looking at the link to it in the board view) and then use the next number in the URL example I posted. This won't work if someone gets to post another post in that board before you do, so you should make sure that the number is correct just before posting, but even if you missed it, you can go back and edit.

Another thing to look out for is the "1" in that URL. Each attachment gets a different number. I haven't checked all the combinations (adding more attachements, editing and removing attachments, etc.), but they would probably affect this as well. In any case, with a single attachment and no editing, it's always 1.