site banner

Friday Fun Thread for March 29, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

These files (many, many more are available at this link) always make me extremely angry. Why are people so obsessed with making them images rather than PDFs (or, even better, HTML files)? The 4000×4000 JPEG file linked above is literally four megabytes! Imagine how much smaller it would be if text were actually stored as text.

Image hosting is straightforward, jpeg decoders are well established and safe.

They can be easily generated by taking a screenshot.

Bundling text and images together into a safe format that works in different screen aspect ratios is a surprisingly difficult problem. You're introducing a lot of complexity in generating them and safely displaying them.

I find it extremely unlikely that the thousands of people who create and view these "CYOA" documents have all refused to install PDF and HTML/EPUB viewers on their computers due to fanatical cybersecurity concerns.

I can't open the original file on mobile. Are one of these the same as what OP linked?

They're all big JPEG files in the same vein, but not identical.

Probably due to the fact that websites such as the one you linked are called imageboards.

The format is pretty awful, though, at least in the image linked in the top post. A grid of 3x3 means having to scroll left and right and then down then left and right, which is a pain in basically any browser compared to just scrolling down on 9 rows of 1 column.

/tg/ allows PDFs as well as images to be uploaded.