logo Sign In

New forum software - please read! — Page 3

This topic has been locked by a moderator.

Author
Time
As long as we're asking for more for the avatars, I wouldn't mind animated gif files too.

Dr. M

Author
Time
SKot said:

Jay, 5k was okay for the smaller avatars from before, but isn't it a little small for the new larger avatars? I had trouble getting an image under 5k, hence why my current one is black & white.

Would 10k be feasible?


Photoshop > "Save for Web"

Plenty of us have full-color avatars under 5K.

10K @ 25 posts per page = 250K just for avatars. That's a bit unreasonable.
Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A

Author
Time
I really had to jam down the resolution on mine just to get it to 5k. Just for the record.
I am fluent in over six million forms of procrastination.
Author
Time
There's a lot of bloat on JPEG images by default. I resized mine in Irfanview, and unchecked a bunch of options (Keep original EXIF data, Keep original IPTC data, Keep original JPEG-comment), and that got my avatar down from 12k to 5k without having to drop the quality any more.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

Author
Time
Well done!

Forum Moderator
Author
Time
Some JPGs compress better than others. My avatar is a "CG Dawn", a simple gradient, and compresses very well. 635 bytes.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time
If you need software for editing/resizing/convert to jpeg, get Gimp. It's free.

Dr. M

Author
Time
Jay said:

Photoshop > "Save for Web"

Plenty of us have full-color avatars under 5K.

10K @ 25 posts per page = 250K just for avatars. That's a bit unreasonable.

I guess I can see that. However, PSYCHODAVE is right, not everyone has Photoshop (even though I do, I was trying to do my avatar from work). My color avatars always seem to come out around 8K.

--SKot

Projects:
Return Of The Ewok and Other Short Films (with OCPmovie) [COMPLETED]
Preserving the…cringe…Star Wars Holiday Special [COMPLETED]
The Star Wars TV Commercials Project [DORMANT]
Felix the Cat 1919-1930 early film shorts preservation [ONGOING]
Lights Out! (lost TV anthology shows) [ONGOING]
Iznogoud (1995 animated series) English audio preservation [ONGOING]

Author
Time
While I agree that GIMP is an excellent graphics editor, it's overkill for simply resizing an image and saving to JPG. I used IrfanView, and was able to get my avatar under 5K at 99% quailty.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
An even better editor than GIMP is Paint.NET. Works just like Photoshop, except it's free.
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
Author
Time
This thread reminded me of an old PM exchange with Jay I had a while back:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a283/IAMTHECHEESE1138/pm.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7N84TM8.jpg

Author
Time
test

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
C3PX said:

I wish everyone's old avatars carried over (and stretched to fill the whole avatar box, or at least didn't have a blue boarder around them


ok someone else said it first hehe. Is it possible to make the avatar "canvas" the same dark blue as the background? So there's no need for stretching, etc to avoid seeing the light blue background with smaller images. Don't want to sound picky, but if it's an easy fix honestly I think it would look much better than seeing slivers of light blue around people's avatars. Transparent gifs would look really nice too if the canvas were same color as background.
Congratulations on the software btw, nice job! It may be my imagination but site navigation has been feeling "snappier" too.
Author
Time
Well done Jay, although I find it bizarre that you write your own forum software instead of using any of the dozens of highly functional open source forums...

You've given us the option to turn off avatars and signatures. Hurrah! I can turn off everyone's useless joke pictures that take up more space on screen than their one line of text ...

However, when I turn off avatars, it still shows a large space with "generic person" image. The idea of turning off images for me, is not to save download time but to stop wasting screen space...

So could you make it that when avatars are off, the space for the avatar is not displayed?
Thanks.
Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
Author
Time
ronlaw said:

Well done Jay, although I find it bizarre that you write your own forum software instead of using any of the dozens of highly functional open source forums...


Because I can't brand and sell them when I'm finished :)
Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A

Author
Time
Good reason :)

So how about my request? In general your forum wastes a lot of screen space - the white space looks nice but is so excessive that on some forums the titles and announcements section takes up the whole visible page and the actual discussion topics are off the bottom.

Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
Author
Time
As I said in the first post, please restrict comments/criticisms/suggestions to the appropriate forums. Thanks.

But to answer your question, yes, I can remove the avatars completely if they're switched off. To address your other concern, I don't see how the spacing could get any tighter vertically. If a forum has announcements, they're going to push down the rest of the content. That's just the way it is. Compressing everything so it all runs together results in poor readability and difficulty in navigating page contents. I don't consider the whitespace a waste at all.

If whitespace were a waste, all web sites, magazines, and newspapers would look like a page from a dictionary.

Closing this topic down now since most new posts will probably be more appropriately placed within the comments section.
Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A