OT: Images for Mobile

[J. Landman Gay]

On 8/26/2016 4:54 PM, Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami wrote:
> given these assumptions
>
> a) the top and bottom of Landscape images contain no significant elements
> b) the left and right sides of portrait images contain no significant elements
> c) we are looking at a crop that goes full screen,
> d) you don't want to generate 5 different possible versions of any one image to package in your apps.
> e) Your "eye candy" team of UX reviewers are very, very forgiving of quality differences and fully appreciate the file size issues (i.e. minute improvements in sharpness and clarity do not warrant keeping a 1.5MB version of the file for mobile when you can put a 250KB file right next to it an you can barely see any difference. )
>
> Then to work in both 16 X 9 phones or 3 X 4 Tablets (with all other Android rects being ignored for the moment) one simple algorithm is:
>
> process all images to 3X4 or 4X3 and, then, using Fullscreen show all, these will center "everywhere" and fill "everywhere" with some areas top and bottom or left and right appearing and disappearing depending on the screen/orientation.
>
> Where your livecode placement scripts always puts these images at the card loc. (centered)

I haven't actually tried this yet, but I'd be tempted to make all the 
images square, using the largest dimension you want to support. Since no 
edges contain significant elements, it doesn't matter which sides get 
pushed off the screen or what orientation the device has. The center of 
interest will always be visible and you don't need to worry much about 
device size.

I've used both 1x and 2x images and both look about the same to me on 
mobile screens, use less RAM, and load faster.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com