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Avatars
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:09
by Zoombie
Yes its been done to death.
Yes it still needs to be fixed.
We just need slightly bigger avatars. I mean would a 20 pixle increase the server? All I want is to have this cool dude as my avatar:
Cuase he'z zhe french guy from hellzing [/fake french accent] and is cool.
And its just a 100 by 100 pixle picture. Just ONE HUNDRED BY ONE HUNDRED! Its only a 20 pixle increase, and it will open up at least fifty odd pictures.
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:20
by Felix the Cat
Do you not have MS Paint on your computer?
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:21
by Zoombie
Huh?
Oh wait...
damn I never noticed that. Thanks.
Mods: Lock please
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:23
by Felix the Cat
Open image in Paint
Image -> Stretch/Skew...
75% in both stretch boxes
voila, avatar-sized pic
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:24
by Zoombie
and behold!
Pip! Hurra for Pip!
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:25
by AF
At this size the smallest reduction in size can have the biggest impact.
I had the perfect avatar but the smallest i could get it to was 4.5kb when the limit is 4kb and I had to massacre the picture to get it down to that size. Which is strange as it was a B+W picture with not too much detail if any.
And the current one I have had some artefacts from resizing.
From zoombies example I see nothing wrong with 100x100 avatars.
Remember avatars reflect on a person, and a lot fo posters recognise people by their avatar than reading their names because it's easier and quicker.
And bandwidth sint an excuse ebcause
a: link offsite
b: half the pages on this forum have images bigger than 1024x800
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:27
by Zoombie
and my avatars are all cool people. First bub, cool. Then Alucard (draculA), so cool he's freazing the atmosphere solid, and finnaly Pip who is only slightly less cool (but the image is not stretched and is a better picture).
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:40
by Candleman
Maybe I should change my avatar...
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 05:48
by Zoombie
You should be some varation of...
me
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 07:43
by KDR_11k
Yes, the 4k limit is VERY low. I had to reduce the color depth on my avatar to fit it into that restriction. Is it even possible to make an 80x80 avatar wih all 8 bits and not overshoot the limit?
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 07:45
by Zoombie
I don't know. I'm just glad I've never had to worry about the size, just the pixle count.
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 08:45
by Neddie
This is why none of my classic animated avatars have ever appeared on here. Stories. Characters. Thirty Colours. 50x50.
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 10:20
by SwiftSpear
I quite like the avatar sizing... however I agree the 4kb limit is a little stringent. I'd be willing to change it but I'm a bit concerned that the limit is there in the first place to protect somewhat limited server capacity.
Right now on the PHPBB we don't have offsite linking enabled. I really have no idea why, but all our avatars are hosted here...
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 10:34
by unpossible
Felix the Cat wrote:Open image in Paint
Image -> Stretch/Skew...
75% in both stretch boxes
voila, avatar-sized pic
/sarcasm ZOMG i never knkew i could resize images! /sarcasm

Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 15:24
by Foxomaniac
SwiftSpear wrote:I quite like the avatar sizing... however I agree the 4kb limit is a little stringent. I'd be willing to change it but I'm a bit concerned that the limit is there in the first place to protect somewhat limited server capacity.
Right now on the PHPBB we don't have offsite linking enabled. I really have no idea why, but all our avatars are hosted here...
Probbly because there's an evil side to offsite linking.
You see, when you off-site link PHPBB won't impose limits on the picture, that means it won't check for the size or the filesize, it'l just use it as your avatar.
In other words - you could possibly see avatars that are 1024x728 or w/e =p.
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 16:39
by Zoombie
I could see how such a large avatar would be a problem.
Also I didn't know how to resize pictures, Unpossible, so that was actually a rather helpfull tip.
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 16:56
by unpossible
Zoombie wrote:I could see how such a large avatar would be a problem.
Also I didn't know how to resize pictures, Unpossible, so that was actually a rather helpfull tip.
/sarcasm 'nuff said /sarcasm

Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 16:57
by Zoombie
Thats funny cause its true.
Now to go...blow things up...
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 17:21
by AF
a: moderators can change avatars
b: it was imposed because SJ has strict views on avatars and prefered a block of text, he thought that increasing the allowed size or dimensions of avatars even slightly would overwhelm the site with flashy graphics that blotted out other content, which is silly.
Look at smoths forum or Darkstars or the other incarnations of darkstars, they all ahve 50kb 100x100 avatar restrictions, yet darkstars only used 40Mb of traffic last month despite statistics from google analytics suggested it would be higher. There was no 'omfg the avatars are soo distracting' or 'ihk this page takes ages to laod with all these avatars'.
Posted: 31 Jul 2006, 18:06
by Aun
Smoth's forum has 100x100 10Kb avatars, which is much easier to work with than this.