I was going to apply, but I have a pretty tight schedule as it is, so. I'd rather be part of the review staff; i'm a writer myself.

Alf

Thats great. You will probably get more done with this stuff than being on the real ticalc Staff anyway.

-Corey

Screenshots look excellent. Better that I don't have to download games just to see if they are decent or not. Keep up the excellent work.

-Jim

Didn't everybody here listen to common knowledge :
the GIF format is kind of 'dead' ;^)

I know some webmasters that are getting rid of all those files !

I suppose that an automated process could transform the already GIFed archives to an other-format-screenshoted ones, but why continue screenshoting in GIF format ?

Authentical : A british company has also registered the 'hypertext-link' and would like to get some royalties now !!!

Well, if ticalc wants to keep putting the screenshots online, then it doesn't have too many choices for the format.

The reason gif is deprecated is, of course, that the compression algorithm it uses is patented by UniSys, who is demanding royalties for use of gif images on commercial sites. ticalc isn't commercial, so if they choose to abandon gif it would merely be on principle.

Most all older browsers - including IE 4.xx and NS 4.xx - only support gif and jpeg. And since jpeg is not lossless, it's obviously not a very good choice for calc screenshots. ticalc wants to maintain some backwards compatibility, last I checked. . .

If they wanna ditch users of old browsers, png would be the format to use here - both lossless and well compressed. But compression wouldn't really be a factor on small calc screenshots, so it's just a question of whether ticalc feels like joining the movement against gif, and I have a feeling it doesn't.

We would if, as you also point out, we didn't have to consider backwards compatibility. Not enough of our users have PNG compatible browsers (yet).

<STUPID NEWBIE QUESTION>

I'm guessing that Internet Explorer 5 would be PNG compatible, right? I hope...

</STUPID NEWBIE QUESTION>

- Jeff

Yes, it does <h4x0r speak> j00 n3b13 14m4h!!!!!1111 </h4x0r speak>

-- ASim / ASimPerson

geeze, and here I thought it was just because GIF files could be made into animations, to put in multiple screenshots...oh well

I would choose GIF because it only needs to consider 256 colors...and a calc only uses 2 (most of the time). I wonder, though, if a monochrome bitmap would be smaller. It really doesn't matter though, because since we are dealing only with 2 colors, the smallest format wins! Those people making a fuss about GIFs because they are old technology...well, oh well! They are small, and get the job done quite well.

<<Most all older browsers - including IE 4.xx and NS 4.xx - only support gif and jpeg.>>

If ticalc.org checks its logs, I have a feeling that they'll find that somewhere between 90 and 95% of users have PNG-aware browsers (IE4 and above, and Netscape 4 and above), even if the PNG code for transparency is severely broken in all of them. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (for which I know statistics) logs indicate that 95% of viewers can see PNG files.

<<I would choose GIF because it only needs to consider 256 colors...and a calc only uses 2 (most of the time). I wonder, though, if a monochrome bitmap would be smaller. It really doesn't matter though, because since we are dealing only with 2 colors, the smallest format wins! Those people making a fuss about GIFs because they are old technology...well, oh well! They are small, and get the job done quite well.>>

Sorry to be rude, but you obviously have NO UNPRINTABLE IDEA what you're talking about. GIF supports *ONLY* 8-bit color. PNG supports:
1-bit, 2-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit, and 16-bit grayscale,
24-bit and 48-bit color,
1-bit, 2-bit, 4-bit, and 8-bit paletted color (including on-off or variable transparency),
8-bit and 16-bit grayscale with a full 8-bit or 16-bit alpha channel, respectively, and
24-bit and 48-bit color with a full 8-bit or 16-bit alpha channel, respectively. (The most deeply insane type therefore supports John Carmack's advocated 64-bit color!).

As Duffman would say, "OH, YEAH!". PNGs natively support monochrome. Who's the smaller format now? PNG is whatever you need it to be: draconian monochrome format to deeply insane 2^48 different colors format. Using smart palette-reducing and filter-and-compression-optimizing programs (pngrewrite and pngcrush, respectively), you can squeeze EVERY LAST BYTE out of a PNG. If you don't use transparency, most browsers (even stupid IE) can view PNGs correctly. (Mac IE5 is notable for supporting all color types of PNG with all possible transparency options correctly.) I have experimented with a few screenshots, and indeed PNG produces significantly smaller files than deprecated GIF for ticalc.org uses. About the only thing that GIF is still good for is animations: the incredibly powerful (although much less beautiful than PNG) MNG format is still being codified and isn't supported much of anywhere yet.

By the way, PNG is not NEARLY as new as people think it is. PNG was developed all the way back in 1995. That's when Windows 95 was released. No one considers Win95 to be a new kid on the block, eh? PNG isn't either.

LONG LIVE PNG!

Hey Nick, adding the ability to upload screenshots of your own with new files is a great idea, but is there any way you could design a system to upload new screenshots to existing files?

I'm still working on my Zelda 89 game, and something like this would really help to add new screenshots of updated features in the game, etc.

-Fil and his $0.02

I vote for that too! Also, when you say black and white, does that exclude grayscale? Or does that just mean no colors, like red or blue? And, can animated .GIFs be uploaded, or only non-animated ones? I couldn't tell from the file upload page.

Grayscale are ok - as long as the program is grayscale too :-)

Animated screenshots are Ok too - but please try to keep them down in size (e.g. don't make them *too* long...)

Great! That's what I thought. Maybe you should consider rewording the text on the File Upload form explaining that, because the way it is, it sounds like you can only upload non-grayscale, non-animated, plain vanilla screenshots.

Uploading screenshots to existing files - that's what our screenshot staff is for :-)

Let us know when this cn be done and HOW. i have animated screen shots for almost all of my games and i would like to have them up on ticalc.

Nivek

Screenshoting all the existing stuff will take at least a year (according to Nick D.'s estimates).

And how? That's what we're here for. We download programs. We take screenshots. We upload said screenshots. Nick adds them.

-- ASim / ASimPerson

Of course, I'll be willing to take requests... ;]

Tim Dorr
"new kid on the block"

Wow, I can see the results already! Every new TI-89 program from the past couple days has been screenshotted! This is great!

So has everything else. Now perhaps not only can I do 83+ stuff, I can work on 'dem 1337 TI-81 programs!

(Seriously, I could...TI's TI-81 emulator can take screenshots in tiff format...and since I have to convert them to gifs anyway...)

--ASim / ASimPerson

Er, um, never mind.

Actually, every new TI-89 program until last Monday.

--BlueCalx

Coolness!

am i the only screenshotter here who can't seem to figure out how to run a program on an 89, 92, or 92 plus? (sorry, i only have an 86 and i have never used one of the other calcs except an 83 plus) i need help!!

whyisntit420

am i the only screenshotter here who doesn't know how to run a program, asm or basic, on an 89, 92, or 92 plus? i only have an 86 and have only used an 83 plus besides that. i need help!!

-whyisntit420

sorry, my comment seems to have been posted twice...