image -- best practices questions

[finlander]

I have a question about best practices for controlling product images on the store. Advice and/or links to other posts or tutorials would be appreciated.

I have read the FAQ/Tutorial (https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/i...hp?article=224) about managing different image sizes for use in the store as small, medium, and large. Small for thumbnail on Product Listing (multiple products) page, Medium for thumbnail on Product Detail page, and finally Large for Larger Image link or perhaps to place on Product Detail page. I understand what the author says about needing these different sizes to provide for small file size for the thumbnails (so pages would load quickly) and having the larger file size for quality larger images. That all makes sense. I understand the instructions for doing some batch processing of images and then FTPing to image directories on the site.

My question is this: I sell only one type of product and every native image is about 400x500 or so, and every one is about 40KB in size at its native (large size). Do I really need to go through the work of making Small- and Medium-sized thumnails as a best practice? Zen Cart beautifully handles creating the thumbnail containers for Small and Medium thumbnails, even though the size of the thumbnails is actually the native image size.

Just wondering if it's worth the work involved when broadband is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Is the advice in the FAQ, about needing tiny thumbnails, a bit outdated, if size of the native file is only 50KB?

[kobra]

Is the advice in the FAQ, about needing tiny thumbnails, a bit outdated, if size of the native file is only 50KB?

Consider the new, featured, special, and all listings at a default of 10 listings per page
10X50KB = 500KB

Image Handler2 a 3rd party module can assist your use of a single large byte wise image

[finlander]

Thank you, Kobra. I have just stumbled across all the recommendations for IH2 in the forums. It seems to be a must-have add-on. I will get to work on in installing and configuring it.

[gjh42]

Must-have for many, but plenty of sites don't need it or would actually be hindered by the automatic handling vs. treating each image uniquely. Since it can be installed by anyone who wants it, leaving the big chunk of complex code as an option is better than building it into core.