It must be time for a new one of these, it's over a year since Knoxville's last one, and it looks like some of the links are dead (plus it got a little OT )
I'm not going to dictate any rules (obviously standard forum rules apply), but I think it would be best if the maximum width for embedded images is 1024 pixels, have them as links to larger versions if you like/need.
Here's my current desktop for my dual-screen setup in Windows XP Pro x64 Edition, which would be 3200x1200 pixels, so I scaled it down to 800x300 and it links to a 2400x900 version (to keep it under 250K):
It is a couple of the photos I took on the flight back from England to Sweden a couple of weeks ago - contrast & colour had to be fiddled with a little bit as the 2 layers of scratched perspex making up the plane window didn't do me any favours
Quick Tips:
1. To create a screenshot of your desktop in Windows:
- Hit the "Print Screen" key (nothing appears to happen, but the screen has been dumped into the clipboard)
- Load up Paint, click Edit / Paste, then save the image (to your desktop is probably easiest)
2. To resize an image, a really useful free tool is IrfanView
- Download here and install
- Load the image into Irfanview (double-click the image if you associated image files with the application, or launch it and use File / Open)
- Click Image / Resize/Resample and enter a new width (keep "preserve aspect ratio" checked and the height adjusts to suit), then click OK
- Click File / Save As, select type "JPG - JPEG Files" and save to your desktop
3. To host an image for free you can create an account on a site like PhotoBucket (limits the file size to 250K each)
(For Linux users I guess you already know the necessary method to take screenshots and tools to resize - otherwise someone else will need to provide instructions )