Underscan's blog/

Recently I have wondered if it were a good idea to ask for the following feature here at Ipernity:

Optional Border (and/or Drop Shadow) For Images

Looking at the "Docs" page I somehow get the impression of the pictures somehow "floating" around the screen without a "foothold".
Since the "Docs" page is white in background - which I personally do like - this impression is especially prominent for very bright pictures.

This is of course a matter of taste and we all know "de gustibus non disputandum est" but still I would very much appreciate the following feature to be implemented:

• In the "My Space -> Preferences" section add an entry
  
  "Default presentation options"
  Select the way in which your pictures are presented under "Docs&Posts".
   
• Choosing this entry will present the user with a dialogue such as:
  
  How would you like your pictures to be presented?
  [x] No border and no shadow
  [ ] Border but no shadow
  [ ] No border but shadow
  [ ] Border as well as shadow

Implementation would be - fairly - easy.
Pictures would simply need (apart from database and coding work) a banal style attribute for their border such as:
style="border: 1px solid #000000;"

Of course there are many possible styles for borders like outset, inset, ridge, groove, double, dashed, dotted, solid but I think the only useful ones for Ipernity would be

• solid: because it very much correlates with the "clear" overall appearance of the site
• double: because it reminds me of "real" picture-postcards

Have a look at "live" implementation of this:

2 pixel solid black border:

4 pixel double border:

The drop shadow would require an additional container and would result in something like this:
<div style="background-color: #c0c0c0; width:240px; height:160px; position: relative; right: -6px; bottom: -6px;">
<img src="u1.ipernity.com/u/2/53/50/675923.6d9b025d1.m.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="160" style="border: 1px solid #000000; background-color: #c0c0c0; position: relative; right: 6px; bottom: 6px;">
</div>

OK, it's just the code since the container style gets filtered. :(
Just copy and paste it into a local blank HTML-file and open that in your browser to see how it is supposed to look.

Of course - as you might have already guessed from the dialogue-mockup above - border and drop shadow could be combined.

Certainly it would be great if this "presentation style" could also be set/deactivated on a per-picture basis, e. g. if you have a picture collage that already has its own border.

As you see, the whole idea can be extended in respect to things like individual border/drop shadow colour, thickness, etc.
Despite this possibility I would vote for a limited set of "simple" border/drop shadow styles, such as mentioned above, to keep the overall "simplistic" feel of Ipernity.
After all it's about the pictures not their borders and I assume noone here wants a MySpace-like optical chaos.
Nonetheless it might be wise to have border/drop shadow thickness "scale" relating to picture size (thumbnail, medium, large...).

So these are my quick feature ramblings - let me know what you think if you feel like it.