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« Last post by Deozaan on June 19, 2016, 02:41 AM »
Thanks for the response Iain. You were courteous. I was curt. I apologize.
In regards to (a) and (b), that does seem to be an accurate summary of the events. Just for clarity, I read your review of The Secret in its entirety. But yes, I did deliberately ignore almost everything you wrote in response to my initial question--not actually because it was too long (as implied by the tl;dr), but rather because I was annoyed by another screenshot response with the "proper text" hidden behind a spoiler. I fully admit that that mindset (being annoyed with the image and being too annoyed/lazy to open the spoiler to read your response) is a fault of my own. Making me scroll past a large image to find the spoiler box, then having to click the spoiler box to show the text was, to me, just unneeded extra work. In my mind, it wasn't worth the time and effort. Again, I suppose that says a lot more about me than anything else.
Anyway, there is no rule or guideline about having to post via text instead of image(s) of text. Go ahead and continue posting images. I'm not your boss, nor do I have any authority to make rules here.
It just seems to me--and this is just my opinion--to be inefficient and a total waste of time for yourself and anyone else trying to communicate with you. I see it as a waste of your time because not only do you have to take the time to take a screenshot and upload/attach it, but then you also have to copy and paste the text anyway and hide it behind a spoiler. Why not just copy/paste the text to begin with and be done with it?
I see it as a waste of everyone else's time because, depending on the circumstances, they have a fairly large image they have to work around (which, as previously mentioned, can cause issues for the visually impaired, but also for people browsing on non-standard devices, such as mobile devices with a small screen, or text-only browsers, etc.). They also have to do more work (opening the spoiler box) to get your message to appear as text if they want just the text version of it. The nice thing about HTML is that the text can easily be modified to display at different sizes, in different color schemes, in different fonts, at different widths, etc., all dynamically and according to the needs/wants of the person reading the text. Images don't work that way. They have preset fonts, colors, formatting, and sizes. Though you may be able to zoom in on an image if you need it larger to see, this can lead to blurring. And you may not be able to zoom out if the image is too large (e.g., viewing the site on a smartphone) requiring the hassle of having to scroll horizontally and vertically multiple times to be able to read each line in its entirety. In my opinion, it's just inconsiderate to include large bodies of text in image format on a (text-based) forum, and is only "acceptable" or "tolerable" or "enjoyable" for bite sized consumption, such as memes. There may be a time and a place for using an image instead of dynamic text (such as when dealing with printers), but online discussion boards are not the time and place. Again, that's just my opinion.
And finally, do you even know for sure if text hidden in spoilers is available to be found by the forum's search function? It used to be that "spoilered" text wasn't even included in quoted text when making a reply to someone else, so it wouldn't surprise me if the SMF software's search function completely ignored spoiler text altogether.
To reiterate: This is all just my opinion. You do what works for you. I'm not trying to start an argument/debate on the topic, nor am I trying to insist that you change your behavior to what I think is best. I apologize for my earlier rudeness. I appreciate your measured and thought out response.
And to everyone else reading this: Sorry for derailing this thread and wasting your time.
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