Show me the pixels!

Ok, this has to stop.

I'm fed up with clicking on thumbnails of an image on a web site and getting a slightly larger thumbnail for my trouble. Costco is one of the worst offenders--go try to buy a BBQ grill from costco.com and click on the images. Microscopic.

Clearly newspapers and magazines have to limit space for photos, but the web? C'mon. What are these people who show you a 200 x 200 pixel photos as a "bigger view" worried about? Storage? I doubt it. Storage is cheaper than dirt and getting more so every day. Bandwidth? Are people still worried about dial-up users? Do you think dial-up users routinely click on links to get larger photos? Do you think they'll be surprised if the larger photo takes a while to download?

Maybe all these web developers think users are still running 800 x 600 screen resolution, so a 200 x 200 picture will be huge on their screen. Braap! Wrong answer, senator. First of all, more and more computers are coming with LCD displays, which not only support only one decent resolution (and it's typically 1024 or 1280, never 800) but also these displays have more pixels per inch, so photos display physically smaller on the screen.

People like big pictures! Photographers have known this for years, which is why they always showcase huge enlargements in their studios instead of 4 x 6s. If you're showing off something important on your website, why not use big pictures? It's not like publishing more web pages costs more money (ok, there's a small incremental cost in overall development, storage, and bandwidth, but really...is it that much?).

You see this everywhere. Try buying clothing online and look at the "larger view" that is offered. One notable exception is Lands End. Note how they use a panning zoom feature to show off details in the product. Another exception (sort of) is Tiger Direct. They use a photo gallery that shows details of their products--the images aren't particularly large, but they do show details well.

No way I would buy a $1000 BBQ from costco.com without more details. I had to find a store and luckily find one in stock to learn about a couple of key details that were important to me (no, it's not the One). But even if it had been perfect, I would never have known because I wouldn't take such a big bet on such little info. Their bad.