Signatures

[TosaInu]

Hello,

It's some time ago that we had a discussion about signatures. Most specifically the pictures in them. People can turn them off completely, but then they also miss text and links. That text can be advertising from a member to visit a topic or to try a mod. So, he can be disadvantageous for a member to switch it off completely. However, when the person experiences a lot of loading lag from the pictures, he may decide to turn it all off.

Of course, some members have more to show, want to see more and also have the hardware to see it. That's why we have the extra picture and broadband option.

The limit for the normal picture was set to 10 kb back then. What would be an acceptable file size for todays low specs?

[NIKOMAHOS]

Nice thread TosaInu.
I will be back soon with my and hopefully team's oppinion.

NIKOMAHOS

[Hooahguy]

I would say a 60kb limit is plenty.
But lets also consider that the vast majority of people are not running dial-up, so really banners shouldnt be much of a problem anymore.

[Moros]

I think the size could and should indeed be upped. But limit might not be bad to keep for those few who might use old computers,... Plus too large and annoying sig banners can be avoided this way somewhat as well. 50kb 60kb is plenty indeed.

[XSamatan]

An increase of this limit up to 20/30 kb is enough for me. What shouldn't be changed are the rules for the size of the sig alltogether, too large signatures just fracture threads and interferes with good reading.

Another point which should be taken in consideration are the mobile Users, more pictures are slowing down loading times and even if you got a mobile-internet-flatrate, those are often throttled after some amount of data.

XSamatan

[TosaInu]

Good point about mobile users XSmatan,

Do you mean the sidekicks or the mobile laptops?

[NIKOMAHOS]

What shouldn't be changed are the rules for the size of the sig alltogether, too large signatures just fracture threads and interferes with good reading.

I agree with XSamatan.
About the size my oppinion is to about 50-60KB.
Will be back soon...

NIKOMAHOS

[M to the A]

25kb :P

[The Celtic Viking]

What shouldn't be changed are the rules for the size of the sig alltogether, too large signatures just fracture threads and interferes with good reading.

Beyond this, I don't care much for my own sake. I've got a pretty fast connection so I'm unlikely to feel any hurt from this, though I don't know just how many kb is to be considered "much" (or indeed how much we have now). Still, I need no more than this anyway.

[TosaInu]

It's 10 kb for images in the normal signature and ??? for the extra one. I don't think we did put a cap on the extra one really.

[Arjos]

As long as signatures don't interfere with reading, I don't see any problem with them...

[XSamatan]

I am referring to handhelds (I-Phone and all the other smartphones), the resolutions available are too small so that large signatures become really annoying. Same goes probably for Netbooks.
As longs as the on screen size stays and doesn't get out of hand I see no problem by increasing the size.

XSamatan

[pevergreen]

I'd say put the filesize up to 50kb, but leave the dimension restrictions in place.

[Cute Wolf]

I'd said 80 Kb limit will be good... but give some dimension restriction (not more than 1000 x 400 pixels, or somewhat)

[pevergreen]

For those unaware, current sig rules:

Pictures
Pictures in signatures are not the occasional used pictures to illustrate something, but show up in every topic. It's already possible that one page contains 25 different 4.5 kb avatars. Users with slow modems will experience serious trouble when loading pages with many (larger) graphics.
Pictures are limited and the limits applies to all images together in the signature:
-10,240 bytes max.
-no sound.
-max 500 pixels wide, max 150 pixels high.

This doesn't apply to occasionaly used pictures in posts, though one should keep in mind that 56k modem users should be able to download it within a reasonable time.
Scrolling topics containing high signatures is considered difficult, so they are limited there too. A signature can be 10 lines high, 500 characters long, 200 pixels high or what limit is reached first.


Obviously 56k isnt such a big deal anymore, but having big pictures in the sig is still annoying.

The current max size, if you can't visualise it, is this:



IMO, plenty big enough. Just up the file size limit, and we are fine.

[Togakure]

I agree with Pevergreen That looks to be a nice size--not too big, but big enough. I wouldn't mind it extending further to the right of the screen, but height-wise, it's just right.

[XSamatan]

I agree with PevergreenI wouldn't mind it extending further to the right of the screen, but height-wise, it's just right.

sounds good

[Subotan]

Whilst we're at it, can we increase the custom avatar size as well, please?

[TosaInu]

100 kb isn't enough Subotan?

[Subotan]

The profile picture limit is 9.8 kb, which means that:


is too big

[TosaInu]

I'm going to check, brb.

[TosaInu]

Gah! They are different settings from what I see in my usercp. Sorry. I'll set it to 25600 bytes to all (25 kb), easy to read ;)

[TosaInu]

The board considers 65535 default, 64 kb.

[Subotan]

Great, thanks Tosa!

[TosaInu]

I don't have a handheld myself XSamatan, but aren't those best served by a special skin anyway? We used to have that years ago, there are vb 4 compatible ones. I'll install one.

[TosaInu]

That mobile style used to be great. Now there's a bug in vbul messing it up :)

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
100 K?
.

[TosaInu]

Thank you for the input so far, please keep it coming. I'll launch a new question to get it further.

The average is 80 kb so far, that's quite a jump up from the 10 kb we have now. Consider we go up that much, everyone uses it to the max and it turns out it's not working that great, can we throttle down then?

If it's going to be 80 kb, the average, who expects to get trouble because of it?

I guess we should keep the current height of max 150 pixels, but the width may be expanded a bit perhaps. When you are browsing this forum, how wide can you see pictures in pixels? I'll add some colored bars to my signature to help you estimate.

[Vuk]

The 800 width is reasonable I think.

[drone]

I would agree. 800 pixels matches Beirut's un-spoilerized picture width rule for the Babe Thread.