[Solved]: All thumbnails blurry... in Firefox v3.x only?

[pharaohweb]

Hey all,

Love CPM, been using it for a long time with absolutely no issues.  Recently, however, it seems like my thumbnail images are rendering blurry in Firefox (they look fine in IE, haven't tested other browsers).  I haven't been studious enough to know for sure, but I think this may be an artifact of Firefox 3.x releases (I've been using the beta prior to today's release, and started noticing the blurriness sometime around first installing it... I think...).   

Notes, in the spirit of full disclosure:

• Running 1.4.9 using ImageMagick to create thumbs server-side

.

• My thumbs quality is set to 80, and like I said I've not had any issues with blurry thumbs.

It's not just newly-created thumbs that are blurry, all my existing thumbs are now blurry - and it's only in Firefox!   Anyone else experiencing this, and have any ideas what's up?  Is there just some dummy setting that changed in FF which I'm missing? 

Here's a link to a thumbnail page on my gallery: http://pharaohweb.com/media/thumbnails.php?album=80.

Looking forward to some thoughts.  Take care.

[Hein Traag]

Upgrade first. You are using  1.4.9 which is 9 versions old. Upgrade is mandatory, download 1.4.18 a.s.a.p.

[pharaohweb]

Appreciate the response, and will upgrade eventually... but I doubt that's the issue (things worked fine before on 1.4.9).

In the meantime, if anyone else can confirm the Firefox 3.x behavior I'd love to hear about it.

Thx.

[Stramm]

Upgrading is not an option... it's mandatory!

[pharaohweb]

Oookaaay guys... I get it.

But since no one is at my door with 1.4.18 burned on a CD and pointing a gun... I wouldn't call it "mandatory."

I'll upgrade tonight; and the question about Firefox 3.x still stands.

[Stramm]

excellent... and virtually not just one person is standing in front of your door with a gun but hundreds with nasty code in front of your server door.

[pharaohweb]

Thanks.  I understand the risks of running exploitable code, just hadn't chosen to upgrade yet.  Two more megs of upload and we'll see if 1.4.18 resolves the issue

EDIT: Successful upgrade to 1.4.18 and thumbs still blurry in Firefox.  If anyone has thoughts, please let me know.  Thanks.

[Hein Traag]

Downloaded and installed FF3 yesterday but did not visit a cpg site with it. Can check tonight. Or someone else can do a check before that time.

[pharaohweb]

Appreciate it.  As you likely know, it's not the end of the world

Just curious.  Take care.

[Stramm]

I couldn't spot any problem...
Tested on a fresh XP installation with IE7 (left), FF3

[Stramm]

on a second view... you're right.
Eg. here, the cartoons thumb http://okshowpics.com/free/index.php?cat=2
Thumb size 149px × 111px, html upscaled to 150px × 112px what makes it blurry in FF3. I guess you have set the thumb width to 150, aspect: max aspect?

[pharaohweb]

Interesting.  I get the same thing if I right-click properties on the image in FF3: "149px × 112px (scaled to 150px × 113px)."  IE shows only 150px x 113px with no mention of "scaling."  If I download the thumbnail with FF or IE and open it with an imaging app, it is indeed 149px x 112px - as Firefox reports. 

My "Max dimension of a thumbnail" setting in config is, and has been, 150px - so I don't know why it'd be an issue...

So, I have to conclude that, somehow, the "scaling" being done in FF is what's causing the blurriness.  Whereas IE, which is also scaling up to my max width of 150px, looks fine.

I'm off to look up if FF changed the way it scales stuff in 3.x.  I'll report back if I find anything.

[Stramm]

This is a custom thumb you uploaded yourself and that hasn't been created by coppermine respective the image library you use (I guess)? If so, create one that has the needed size of 150px width and retry.

[pharaohweb]

Nope, all the thumbs are Coppermine/ImageMagick-generated.

Looking at thumbs created as recently as last night to months back, all seem to be at the 149px x 112px size.

[Nibbler]

Can you test with GD2?

[pharaohweb]

OK, changed to GD2 on server-side and did a quick test-gallery.  Same blurry results in FF, looks OK in IE.  Here's the test thumbs, created with GD2 and CPG 1.4.18 just now: http://pharaohweb.com/media/thumbnails.php?album=88.

Thanks.

[pharaohweb]

For grins, I installed a Firefox 2.0.0.14 on a "virgin" XP machine (has never had a FF install previous).  The images look as sharp as IE (no blurriness), and no mention of "scaling" in the right-click properties (just shows 150px x 113px like IE). 

So, I've confirmed that, for me at least, this issue is directly related to FF3.x.

Still looking for info on how they may have changed image-scaling in the 3.x line.

EDIT: Looks like there were changes in the 3.x line (http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2006/december/scalingimages).  Hmm...  Regardless, this appears to be a Firefox "problem" and not Coppermine.

EDIT2: After some Googling, turns out the FF 3.x line switched to the Cairo graphics library, and now does image scaling differently. As far as I can tell, this was done with intent to produce "smoother" or higher quality scaled images, but can have the opposite effect for smaller detailed images, particularly pixel-art & thumbnails.  There are plenty of folks online also talking about how smaller images are "blurry" when viewed with FF3.x (one example here: http://www.nivas.hr/blog/2008/04/08/firefox-3-beta-5-blurring-images/.  IMO this issue is "solved" as it never actually had anything to do w/CPG in the first place.  Thanks for the help, at least I got an upgrade out of it.  Now I just wait for the ability to turn off the FF3.x scaling feature.

[neil fitzgerald]

I'm not so sure this isn't related to Coppermine.
I also noticed it began with FF3, but I wonder if it isn't simply revealing some other issue.
All my thumbnails are made manually (150 px max dimension).
Right-click > properties indicates Firefox is scaling all the blurry thumbnails, usually up one pixel on the short side compared with the actual size of the image (as uploaded or saved off the web page). Properties in IE gives the same dimensions as the scaled number in FF, so they are both scaling them but FF doesn't do such a good job of it.
The page source shows that the browsers are being given these wrong dimensions for the thumbnails (the value Firefox says "scaled to"). Could it be that Coppermine is returning the wrong short side dimension for thumbnails?


e.g. the first thumbnail on http://www.neilfitzgeraldphoto.co.nz/gallery/index.php?cat=17 displays at 150 x 107 px on FF3 and IE7 but actual image is 150 x 106 px.

I have bumbled my way through quite a few mods on my site so apologise if this is something I have unwittingly induced.

[Nibbler]

Can you see if running the 're-read image dimensions' in admin tools fixes it?

[neil fitzgerald]

Do you mean "Reload file dimensions and size information"? That didn't change anything.