The GIMP screenshot monstrosity.
GIMP 2.4 was recently released. Although I do very little image manipulation, GIMP is one of the more widely used open source applications, thus I like to keep up to date with its developments.
One of the first things I went to check out after reading of the release was the screenshots section of their web page. I have to say, it was a very disappointing experience.
They appear to be using a JavaScript-based image overlay that resizes the image dynamically, and it is quite problematic. The first issue I noticed was that it took several seconds to load, even over a relatively fast Internet connection, on a fairly modern PC. During this time, the CPU usage spiked to 100% while it was loading the resized image. This was the case with the three browsers I tried: recent versions of Seamonkey, Konqueror and Opera.
The screenshot images did eventually load in all three browsers. Unfortunately, the quality was absolutely terrible. Now, one would think that the web site of an image manipulation program would have decent screenshots of their application to show off to the world. After all, those who are putting out such an application should know a thing or two about creating presentable, high-quality images, right?
I took a few screenshots myself, showing the horrible quality of the GIMP screenshots under the different browsers I used. Click on the links below to view the images. Note the sharp contrast between the quality of the browser, and the quality of the screenshot being rendered by the browser:
Seamonkey
Opera
Konqueror
It’s pretty disappointing that their site showed such problems with three different browsers, using three different rendering engines and three different JavaScript implementations. Although I presume the problem is with the JavaScript script itself, and not with the browsers, I think this still does indicate the immature nature of JavaScript for such applications. The safest bet for webmasters is to still avoid using it. In this case, there’s really no reason why it should be used in the first place.
What’s perhaps most disappointing of all, however, is the negative impression that this will no doubt leave with many potential users. They’ll come to the site, expecting to see some high-quality, legible images of GIMP in action. But all they’ll find is a blurry mess that monopolizes their CPU. That’ll surely drive them away. But hopefully by the time you’re reading this, they GIMP folks will have fixed their site. Maybe the best thing for them to do would be to ditch the JavaScript code altogether. It adds nothing, but brings much in the way of pain.
October 25th, 2007 at 5:35 am
I tried doing the same on Firefox and didn’t face any increase in CPU usage - it remained to the usual 4-5%
Then, I thought that maybe this is an issue with other browsers, so I also opened the same page and again clicked on the same screenshot in Opera, but the experience was more or less the same (except that CPU usage spiked up for around 1 - 2 seconds)
Yes, I agree that opening the takes several seconds to load, but I didn’t find any CPU usage issues on FF or Opera.
October 25th, 2007 at 5:55 am
Yes, I hate those things. I’m seeing them more and more and they never seem to do anything but waste my CPU, load slowly, and sometimes look bad.
The sad thing is that just opening them in a new window makes them look good.