iRide.2020.03.22 Rotation

I also share some of the photos that I post here through my Strava ride-recording account; often it's just a subset of what is on the blog. I foolishly assumed that other Strava users would use the mobile app the way I do: a quick check on my own rides and the rides of people I follow with a leisurely review on the big screen of the desktop computer at a later time. Not so, I discovered today, much to my chagrin and dismay. I decided some sleuthing was required to find out first if I was mistaken before I made a fool of myself.

Generally speaking, photography is not a primary interest for many Strava users and it's more about the riding stats, which is fair enough; however, there are sufficient quality photographs to delight me daily. The way the Strava mobile app handles images is disappointing, but good enough for a quick and dirty way to check. For some people, for a variety of reasons, the mobile app is the only way they experience Strava.

I experimented with ways to provide the rotation that Strava has neglected to offer. Vertical cropping of landscapes if a fool's errand. I tried it and it was a flop. I settled on supplying already-rotated images that may be correctly viewed by rotating the phone, which is how auto-rotation should work. It's a kludge, but I may continue to do it even though my heart is not in the idea. Providing two versions only seems reasonable if used for for a single photo.

Zooming is another disappointment: the image size boomerangs when the fingers used to make a zoom gesture are removed from the touchscreen. Both of these photo-handling issues have extensive and long standing discussions in the Strava support pages, but both seem to be issues that the service provider does not feel moved to address.

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