FAQ: Avatar PNGs and script errors

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Qhimm

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As some of you may or may not have noticed, the forums contain a code snippet for IE to correctly process transparency in PNG files. Thus for example, Sephiroth3D's avatar is on a transparent background instead of boring gray.

A current problem is, however, if someone is using a broken PNG link as their avatar, in which case the code will go BLEH and cough up errors. I believe the current issues with this were spawned from Aaron's avatar, which the last time I checked was broken.

The problem will be looked into, albeit not right now. Patience is requested, either that or go poke Aaron. :wink:

EDIT: I have disabled Aaron's avatar for him, so you might not want to poke him too much...
 
Gah!  My server went down Friday and I can't go fix it til tomorrow!  Sorry about that.
 
Oh christ no. I'm about to go home to 56.6kbps again :weep:
 
lol, i know i was just joking about divx. but swf files for avatars would actually be nice. auto resize it, and only accept flash 4 or lower.
 
well you know what. Avatars are not needed for anything, they are just a fancy thingy ... They should be small on size, which is hard to do on nice anims ... if you could make nice SWF into 10kb then why not ? But usually its not possible.

Aaron: hey if you want you can give your avatar to my server, it is usually online ... looks stable.
 
Well, mine is actually pretty stable, it's only down cause I thought I could upgrade from the pre-release version of Windows Server 2003 to the final version remotely (well it worked in Virtual PC), but apparently something came up so I gotta go up to school and plug in a monitor and everything and finish the setup.
 
Avatars except GIF, JPEG and PNG (standard formats) will not be accepted here, now or later. SWF files are straight out, for size and performance issues. I'm also rather thinking of enforcing size restrictions on avatars though, because as Jari pointed out, large avatars aren't a pretty sight -- they break the design, make the page harder to read and increase the download size for modem users.
 
Yeah, I think as a rule of thumb avatars should realy be kept within a 1000-2000 bytes limit.
 
1-2kb? Isnt that rather small?
I think that the size of the avatar should be no larger than 20kb
and resolution no bigger than 120by120

Gif is the only file format that should be used because:

1, A gif file can be animated
2, They are small
3, Custom palettes can make them look just as good as Jpeg or Png files.
4, They can be transparent
5, Almost everything views gif files perfectly
6, And any other reason i cant think of at the moment.

It would also be nice if there was a gif gallery to use as avatars, like people upload them and other people can use them so there arent any "ugly" avatars made with windows paint. Kinda like how mirex's upload page thingy is.
 
And now, switching back to the harsh reality that is keeping everyone happy, the following is much more likely:

  • Maximum size: 6kB
  • Maximum resolution: 80x80
  • Allowed formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG
I'll also look into the bandwidth requirements for hosting people's avatars on the server, saves the trouble of broken avatars...[/list]
 
120x120 is kind of big.  I think Qhimm's limitations are reasonable.

I think mine is 90x60 (it was 60x60 but I decided that the "wide" one looked better).  And its 10k.

Gif is the only file format that should be used because:
3, Custom palettes can make them look just as good as Jpeg or Png files.
Click to expand...
Gah, my avatar looked considerably worse as a GIF.
 
Jesus Mofokubik that's huge! There's no way that could be an avatar, what resolution are you running at?

You know what phpBB really needs is an option in your preferences to choose whether you want to see avatars or not. That would simplify things, and would suit me since I'm on broadband now. However I wouldn't want avatars to be any larger than 100x100.

I don't mind animated avatars, but only slightly animated and not too distracting, like Jedimarks. I hate those ones with entire scenes from movies and stuff. A good one for you Mofokubik would be to have Ed blink every now an again, would only take 1 or 2 extra frames.

Oh, and you think that forum's bad? You should take a look at the K-lite forums.
 
i wasnt going to use it for an avatar..jeez...i was just showing aaron that the colors look fine in cutom palette gif files.

i was going to redo my pic into a gif...and make her blink...but i dont even have the software i need for that
 
ahahahahaha, thats a big avatar. maybe you should just turn them off. I really couldnt care less the size or format of them, or even if they are turned off.
 
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