Feedback on a new (I am assuming) feature - pictures as links....

[Ponypoor]

I am sorry but I do have to say that I absolutely detest the links that show as a picture. I just spent a frantic 5 minutes trying to figure out why my post from earlier, on a thread I am on, was concatenated. I even started up my laptop thinking it was something on my Smart Phone (which is actually a dumb name for basically a computer with cellular calling abilities).

Anywho I digress, I have figured out that the link is the photo/picture, which now makes it incredibly difficult for me to distinguish between the 'real' content and a REAL link.

I am sorry but in my humble opinion this is an epic fail on the part of 'improvements' in IT. Why is it that everyone in the IT industry must try to 'improve' something. When I pick up a book I do not have to spent umpteen hours trying to figure out how it works. The IT world has not learnt a cardinal rule obviously - know your audience. Everyone in the whole world knows what to expect when they start their computers, yet still IT companies insist upon changing things up every few years. The amount of frustration this causes in business and the general public should be a wakeup call, but obvious it isn't.

Once I retire I will be chucking my Stupid Phone and Laptop into the river, Oh and FYI - I spent the better part of 15 yrs working in IT as a Programmer Analyst at IBM and Sears... so I know a wee bit about the IT world.

FYI - I also do not find the loading of photos any faster, and I am finding a lag in the time I click on the emoji option and them showing up. I see this on both my Stupid Phone and the Laptop (I have starlink internet so it's reasonably fast BTW).

Sorry to be so whiny but after the week I spent at work fighting my computer and now this.......

 

[Debbie292d]

I am sorry but I do have to say that I absolutely detest the links that show as a picture. I just spent a frantic 5 minutes trying to figure out why my post from earlier, on a thread I am on, was concatenated. I even started up my laptop thinking it was something on my Smart Phone (which is actually a dumb name for basically a computer with cellular calling abilities).

Anywho I digress, I have figured out that the link is the photo/picture, which now makes it incredibly difficult for me to distinguish between the 'real' content and a REAL link.

I am sorry but in my humble opinion this is an epic fail on the part of 'improvements' in IT. Why is it that everyone in the IT industry must try to 'improve' something. When I pick up a book I do not have to spent umpteen hours trying to figure out how it works. The IT world has not learnt a cardinal rule obviously - know your audience. Everyone in the whole world knows what to expect when they start their computers, yet still IT companies insist upon changing things up every few years. The amount of frustration this causes in business and the general public should be a wakeup call, but obvious it isn't.

Once I retire I will be chucking my Stupid Phone and Laptop into the river, Oh and FYI - I spent the better part of 15 yrs working in IT as a Programmer Analyst at IBM and Sears... so I know a wee bit about the IT world.

FYI - I also do not find the loading of photos any faster, and I am finding a lag in the time I click on the emoji option and them showing up. I see this on both my Stupid Phone and the Laptop (I have starlink internet so it's reasonably fast BTW).

Sorry to be so whiny but after the week I spent at work fighting my computer and now this.......

I believe this was brought up somewhere regarding the link post being TMI in some situations. That being if it had tags in the post, then it appears like everyone was going to be tagged again, but I don't believe that is the case. The other was in posting a link to an article, and it shows who all had "read" it, when in reality, all they did was open it. But again, TMI perhaps?

I'm guessing this might also be on that "list" I mentioned.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I am sorry but I do have to say that I absolutely detest the links that show as a picture. I just spent a frantic 5 minutes trying to figure out why my post from earlier, on a thread I am on, was concatenated. I even started up my laptop thinking it was something on my Smart Phone (which is actually a dumb name for basically a computer with cellular calling abilities).

Anywho I digress, I have figured out that the link is the photo/picture, which now makes it incredibly difficult for me to distinguish between the 'real' content and a REAL link.

I am sorry but in my humble opinion this is an epic fail on the part of 'improvements' in IT. Why is it that everyone in the IT industry must try to 'improve' something. When I pick up a book I do not have to spent umpteen hours trying to figure out how it works. The IT world has not learnt a cardinal rule obviously - know your audience. Everyone in the whole world knows what to expect when they start their computers, yet still IT companies insist upon changing things up every few years. The amount of frustration this causes in business and the general public should be a wakeup call, but obvious it isn't.

Once I retire I will be chucking my Stupid Phone and Laptop into the river, Oh and FYI - I spent the better part of 15 yrs working in IT as a Programmer Analyst at IBM and Sears... so I know a wee bit about the IT world.

FYI - I also do not find the loading of photos any faster, and I am finding a lag in the time I click on the emoji option and them showing up. I see this on both my Stupid Phone and the Laptop (I have starlink internet so it's reasonably fast BTW).

Sorry to be so whiny but after the week I spent at work fighting my computer and now this.......

I agree! To me, it’s visually distracting, it takes up incessant “real estate” (length of post on the screen), it adds clutter, and it doesn’t provide any helpful information that a plain link doesn’t do perfectly well.

I’m hoping that, similarly to the restoration of the blue thumbs-up Like reaction, this can be undone.

 

[kattabelly]

I think it's the 'convert internal URL to embed' option being ticked on the messages setup page that's causing this, in case that's helpful for any admins or whoever.

 

[Ponypoor]

I think it's the 'convert internal URL to embed' option being ticked on the messages setup page that's causing this, in case that's helpful for any admins or whoever.

Hmmm - yes that sounds reasonable - not knowing the system/coding they use here...

but this is what I see, and it doesn't look line a link just a concatenated message - I was freaking out thinking I had done something wrong in my haste:

 

[kattabelly]

Hmmm - yes that sounds reasonable - not knowing the system/coding they use here...

but this is what I see, and it doesn't look line a link just a concatenated message - I was freaking out thinking I had done something wrong in my haste:

View attachment 4227421

Because it's recognised you were posting a link from this same website and converted the link into a "rich preview". The previous version of xenforo would just "unfurl" the link to give you more info than just the URL.

I think.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Yeah, I vote get rid of it. A simple link is all that's needed.

 

[RoyalChick]

This did come up in the feedback thread but I am not sure enough people had tried it yet to see how it looked. Apparently if it has video it also shows the video.
I can see why in some situations that is a nice feature - but it certainly is a bit visually distracting and makes it harder to see how to click on the link if you actually want to go to the link.
I just tried embedding the link in a word like 'here' and that shows up as an old fashioned link - but of course it is an extra step to do that.

 

[WingItRanch]

I like it

 

[Ponypoor]

Because it's recognised you were posting a link from this same website and converted the link into a "rich preview". The previous version of xenforo would just "unfurl" the link to give you more info than just the URL.

I think.

A very small icon with a photo/pic such as you would see in an email attachment (which BTW I also dislike), would even be better than filling the space.