Avatars... without slowing things down

Discussion in 'Forum Feedback' started by bigredlemon, Dec 15, 2002.

  1. bigredlemon

    bigredlemon Regular Member

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    I think enabling Avatars could really add some personalization to the forum, so that we aren't all just blank text. I know you were concerned about threat crapping if avatar-enabling was tied to the number of posts. How about tying it to the time you've been a member? Say, one week or month. You can limit the image resolution to be 100x100, and file type to jpeg. This eliminates distracting animated gifs, and keeps the file size low. Most jpegs that size are only 5k. Even the busiest threads have at most 10 different posters. That's only 50kB extra in the extreme case. That's only 25% more to download one time only since it'll be cached afterwards.

    Note that I'm talking about avatars, not signatures. THAT could be distracting. Small static avatars are not. C'mon Kwun!! Give us what we want!:cool: :)
     
  2. bigredlemon

    bigredlemon Regular Member

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    BTW, for those whole don't know, avatars are tiny pictures that appear under your name at the left column.
     
  3. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    I seen the ones at playbadminton.com

    My personal feeling is that they don't hold much value. After all, BF is the busiest English language badminton forum WITHOUT avatars!
     
  4. bigredlemon

    bigredlemon Regular Member

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    I've never been to playbadminton, how busy are they?
    I'm put off by their colours... there's a little too much contrast.
     
  5. jwu

    jwu Regular Member

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    or perhaps we can just post a little image in our profile. put a face behind the names. :D
     
  6. kwun

    kwun Administrator

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    what Cheung said.

    besides, what are you planning to put in the image? a picture of yourself?
     
  7. jwu

    jwu Regular Member

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    that was the idea, but I guess not many will go thru with it and it wouldn't be worth the effort. :D
     
  8. Pecheur

    Pecheur Regular Member

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    Actually I had a look at hardwarezone forums (www.hardwarezone.com) where modious seems to hang out and they seem to use exactly the same software as BF (I wasn't looking all that closely so it might be a mildly different version) and they do use avatars. Whilst a few or them have cars, or their comps as avatars, most of the guys seem to have really pics of really cute Asians chicks (usually just the face). Now whilst this isn't a bad thing ;) I can't say it'd really add much to our forums.
     
  9. Joanne

    Joanne Regular Member

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    Lol. I can just imagine what will appear if avatars DO appear. lol. Pictures of racquets, shuttles, badminton players, and pictures of members. lol. :D
     
  10. bigredlemon

    bigredlemon Regular Member

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    Pechur is probably right... it won't add that much. How about adding it to our profiles?
     

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