NEW Low Data Mode Feature

There have been some changes going on behind the scenes to make the site even faster, and part of this change allows us to create even lower resolution thumbnails for those on very slow internet connections. In my testing it has cut the load times on the main page massively, sometimes by a factor of 10. This will also work for everyone now, not just those with 4k screens.

The old option in your preferences is now gone, you now need to change your theme which you can find under the hamburger menu under the Theme Selector section, just select Low Bandwith. The benefit of this is that we can turn off other features that slow load times as well, so it’s the most optimized experience possible. The thumbnails are only 50x50px and scaled up so they will be quite blurry/pixelated, but it will give you an idea of what the image is so you can click through to a larger version.

@terri_barnett @Ian_Wolfenden @Igor_Doncov please give this a try and let me know what you think. If you know of anyone else that would benefit from this please mention them in this post. Currently this is only for the dark theme, if anyone wants this feature for the light theme just let me know and I can add it.

Wow. That’s noticeably faster. Thank you!

1 Like

Does this only appear for people on low bandwidth conttections? Mine says In Layers rather than low bandwidth (which is fine, since I have a high speed connection).

Thanks for letting me know Harley, somehow it got disabled. I fixed it and it should appear now.

I see it now. Good to know if I am ever on a low bandwidth connection.

HI David, is this a toggle feature? The reason I ask is there away to back out of it if you click on it? Only reason I ask is it seems as though all of the thumbnail images are fuzzy after clicking on it. I suspect it might just be me, but would at least prefer the toggle if it will do that…thank you!

Hey Paul, you just go back to one of the other themes (Dark, Light, etc.) and it should automatically switch back to the high resolution thumbnails.

David, worked like a well oiled machine clicking on the Dark. I’ll try both ways off and on to see which works best for my setup. Thank you as always.

1 Like

Let me know if something in between would work better, I could create one that is lower resolution but not quite so low.

1 Like

Thanks David. As a new member, and as a software designer myself, I really appreciate the great design of this site, and the fact that you are continually improving it!

3 Likes

Hi @NPN_Editor David: Since I’m on a barely registerable Verizon connection, I appreciate this. However, when I shifted to it, I started getting a lot of unwanted text on the community page, which is usually where I start. I exited and reentered and logged out and logged back in, but neither of those changed it. Any idea where I need to click to get rid of that stuff?

That was my fault, should be fixed now. Thanks for bringing it up Dennis, glad that this is working well for you!

That fixed the problem. thanks, David.

1 Like