Concerning the recent Tumblr update: I'm still at a loss how to deal with the change to 40 extra pixels in width. It sounds trivial doesn't it, 40 pixels? The post above - four GIFs in a set recreating a witty scene from Doctor Who - is typical of the post I create. In fact, since I started the Flight Through Eternity Tumblr blog in May 2013, I've created 2040 posts like this, totaling approximately 13000 individual GIFs. I'm also thrilled that the official BBC Doctor Who Tumblr blog has reblogged many of my posts. Each GIF has been created to be 245 x 184 pixels, so when they're displayed side-by-side with the 10 pixel space automatically inserted into the post between them both GIFs together span the 500 pixel post width. Until now, this method has worked perfectly, and the GIFs I post can be seen to be 245 pixels wide on my blog, my queue, on your dash and most anyone else's blog if they reblog (unless they have set their blog theme to post bigger images - but that's okay because it's their choice.). Moreover, any graphics or GIFs you and other bloggers have made appeared on my feed looking exactly the same as you/they intended them to be seen. Now, here's the rub. This is how the recent update is affecting me: I create a GIFset like the above - each GIF is 245 wide by 184 tall, as always. The image is in focus and the text is crisp, sharp and readable. BUT on my blog (Lightweight Theme by Artur Kim) they are now reproduced as 248 wide by 186 tall . It seems like a trivial resizing, but the image loses some focus and the text becomes less distinct. AND the dashboard-feed - mine and presumably yours - the same images are reproduced as 268 wide by 201 tall, causing further fuzziness and loss of sharpness, focus and clarity all round. This Tumblr update has impacted not only on new posts I create, but on every post and every GIFset I have made since May 2013. It also impacts in the same way on every graphics posting made by every other Tumblr content-creator since the very beginning of Tumblr. On my blog itself, using a marvellous bit of code authored and posted by Elinor on her blog, the GIFs are forced back to their proper dimensions and thus preserve their integrity. This seems to take effect only once the entire page has loaded, and only if you have Java running.
But this still doesn't deliver my posts to your dash the way they were meant to be seen and enjoyed. So, although Elinor's work is a great fix, it's not the entire solution. And it's the inconsistency that's cheesing me off! Should I make GIFs that are 248 pix wide so they look right on my blog, or make them 268 pixs wide so they look clear on my followers' dashboards, or simply continue to make them 245 pix wide and run Elinor's script on my blog to negate the update's effects? Either way, the GIFsets I make are going to look right on only one of those platforms, and blurry-shitty on the other two!
So, is this the way Yahoo intend to keep Tumblr from now on, or is this just a teething problem?
I think, for now, I'll continue to make my GIFsets the way I always have in the past, and hope that Tumblr begins to appreciate the ruinous effect this update has had on a cultural archive of millions of graphics posts and reverts back to 500 pix wide posts.
