Pic/Avatar Size?

Gunny · Post by **Gunny** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 6:42 pm

What kind of catastropy would it cause to raise the pic size limit to 10k?

3278 · Post by **3278** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 10:39 pm

Nothing catastrophic, only the possibility that those on slower connections will experience 40 percent longer loads of avatars. Given that few people will want or desire 10k avatars, the load increase would likely be minimal.

That said, a 10k image that's 80x80 is likely unnecessarily large, even for animated .gifs, which I'm assuming the desired avatar is; most likely, optimization could bring it down to an allowable size.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 2:18 am

For what it's worth, <a href="http://underworld93.com/phpbb/index.php">Underworld</a> allows an amazing 1256kb for avatar size, allowing me to have this image:

Which is, in fact, well /below/ the maximum allowed size. Personally, I think it'd be cool as hell if we allowed avatars of this resolution, but I've got broadband.

For reference, Bulldrek allows 6kb avatars. The image above is 160kb, about 27 times larger than we allow here. The maximum size allowed there is 1256kb, about eight times larger that the image above, about 209 times larger than we allow here.

Adam · Post by **Adam** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 2:34 am

And, thankfully, Underworld also allows you to turn off avatars. ;-)

I really don't see why we shouldn't bump the size limit up here. Unless I'm mistaken we're not running into bandwidth problems nor are any users currently complaining that the server is too slow, so it's probably safe - as you said, few people will likely use a larger avatar.

But something sane, like 10-15KB, not a meg. ;-)

Reika · Post by **Reika** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:56 am

I wouldn't mind a larger avatar, not just in file size, but dimension wise. I've seen really spiffy avatars I'd love to use, but haven't been able to because when shrunk down to fit the what? 80 by 80 pixel? You can't see what they are.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 5:18 pm

Adam wrote:And, thankfully, Underworld also allows you to turn off avatars. ;-)

Profile -> 'Show avatars in posts?' Yes/No is a wonderful thing

Bulldrek traffic is a minor blip on the server side, heck, 2meg avatars wouldn't matter there. I think we're still at 60x60 pixel wise (though it could be 80x80, who knows). Either way its not that big of a deal except for how it affects user load times, so if people want it bigger, sure :7 I'd only caution about going bigger pixel wise than 100x100 as that's about the limit before that table design starts looking way off.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 7:50 pm

I would think, between [stripped], the ability to turn avatars off on any theme, and our self-policing, we could get away with some pretty liberal avatar sizes. I agree the dimensions should be kept reasonable - 100x100 sounds nice to me - to prevent them looking totally out-of-place in the layout; this layout is /not/ designed with avatars 200 x 200 in mind, and would look quite ridiculous [as Underworld sometimes does, now, with big avatars like mine].

Reika · Post by **Reika** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 12:03 am

100 x 100 would be perfect.

FlakJacket · Post by **FlakJacket** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 3:03 am

If we did allow animated avatars, would there be any way to make it so you could turn them off? Have them flagged as animated so you you could chose to have them turned off whilst keeping regular avatars on, a kind of half way house.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 5:05 am

Not that I'm aware of, its simply a .gif file which can be static or animated

3278 · Post by **3278** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:06 am

You could let the flag change the way the <img> tag is written out, to include the loop attribute set to 1. [Or 0; not sure how that works.] That way, animated gifs would play, but not more than once, allowing your eyes and your processor some respite.

Barring that - and while it's a simple modification, we all know how long those take! - the only recourse would be begging jerks like me not to make eye-jangling videos for avatars.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:07 am

FlakJacket wrote:If we did allow animated avatars...

We do allow animated avatars. The ones we allow just aren't very <i>big</i>.

Anguirel · Post by **Anguirel** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 1:54 pm

3278 wrote:
FlakJacket wrote:If we did allow animated avatars...
We do allow animated avatars. The ones we allow just aren't very <i>big</i>.

Yeah. You only get things like flashing Ape Sex.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 4:04 pm

Exactly. And Teja's dancer, and Cash's little dude shooting stuff. I've had a couple, but the filesize limitation [and the forum environment] stifles attempts to do anything too complex. DV8 had one he wanted to use, but it was vastly over our filesize limits.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 4:32 pm

So...what do we want? 100x100, say 20k?

Reika · Post by **Reika** » Sat Jan 01, 2005 1:20 am

Kai wrote:So...what do we want? 100x100, say 20k?

Sounds good to me.

Anguirel · Post by **Anguirel** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 7:26 pm

Can we have a tastefulness filter? We don't need The Next Big Thing coming back just to give us animated stupidity as an avatar...

But 100x100 and 20k sounds good.

Gunny · Post by **Gunny** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:12 am

I like 100x100