Why 64x64?

RustySpoonRustySpoon Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18069Members
in Off-Topic
Some of you may have noticed a recent change in the forums avatar size requirements. Max size is now a whopping 64x64.

Now, I know it's your choice. I know I have no voice in this. I know I shouldn't be asking. But, why? The max filesize is the still the same so it's not a bandwith issue. I have 3mbs of attachments which you could delete instead (I just realised it myself, so I'll get to it). It can't possibly me a resolution thing. Seriously if someone is running windows in something like 640x640 this isn't the place for them. Down with low res.

So, out of genuine interest, why did you do it? (And don't ban me, I'm not going all scooterblue on you <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> )
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Comments

  • Cold_NiTeCold_NiTe Join Date: 2003-09-15 Member: 20875Members
    While I understand your sentiments, I have always felt that the avatar and signature limitations in this place were a good thing. Because rules are more readily enforced here, we've got the community we have. It's really a subconcious effect more than anything else. All the swear filtering, account limitations and posting rules might seem overzealous, but it also gives this forum a bit more of a backbone.
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  • RoverRover blargh Join Date: 2003-09-23 Member: 21139Members
    <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=7218770086226093056&showtopic=98548" target="_blank">click?</a>
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    Max size has been 64x64 for as long as I've been a member of this forum. Down with giant avatars. Long live nice, clean pages. Vive la conservatismo!
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  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu Anememone Join Date: 2002-03-23 Member: 345Members
    Shut up or they'll actually drop it, to something like 32x32 or 1x1.

    I'd choose orange though, if we ever do get dropped down to a pixel.
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  • Marik_SteeleMarik_Steele To rule in hell... Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9466Members
    There's multiple small reasons that we've taken into consideration when deciding to keep at the current avatar size limits. Such as the creativity involved in engineering up an avatar within such constraints. And the cleanliness of having avatars that don't make up >50% of the height of a person's post

    And I've just thought of another reason, but I must make it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR I am not talking about a planned feature, secret thing, etc. This is just wild, extremely generalized speculation. If/when at some point in the future we make a change or addition to the site, there is a remote possibility avatars would be visible on such an addition/change, and there is a possibility smaller avatars may be more convenient in its layout.[/speculation]
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  • QuaunautQuaunaut The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    Personally, I love the sizes.


    File sizes however...don't allow high quality varied imagery.
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  • TyrainTyrain Join Date: 2003-01-03 Member: 11746Members
    Could be a bit larger, like 90x90 but overall, I like them avatars(izes)
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  • TalesinTalesin Our own little well of hate Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
    edited November 2006
    Cutting avatar filesizes down further may end up happening. Planning for it now would not be ill-advised.

    After all. With modern day compression, if you can't fit 4096 individual pixels in under 22,000 bytes, there's something wrong. Avatars aren't photorealistic in most cases. You don't need a 32-bit palette. And it's just ego to think that a cel-shaded snippet has any right to take more space than an animated banner.

    Could always be cut back to grayscale/alpha-channel-only avatars. Heck, that'd be even smaller than my own av (which, for the lazy, weighs in at just over a hefty 2KB in all of its sharply defined glory).
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  • QuaunautQuaunaut The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited November 2006
    <!--quoteo(post=1578083:date=Nov 16 2006, 07:07 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Talesin @ Nov 16 2006, 07:07 PM) [snapback]1578083[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    Cutting avatar filesizes down further may end up happening. Planning for it now would not be ill-advised.

    After all. With modern day compression, if you can't fit 4096 individual pixels in under 22,000 bytes, there's something wrong. Avatars aren't photorealistic in most cases. You don't need a 32-bit palette. And it's just ego to think that a cel-shaded snippet has any right to take more space than an animated banner.

    Could always be cut back to grayscale/alpha-channel-only avatars. Heck, that'd be even smaller than my own av (which, for the lazy, weighs in at just over a hefty 2KB in all of its sharply defined glory).
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    Has nothing to do with ego.

    It has to do with the fact that when I took this out of photoshop, even with a quality of 0 for the jpg, it was at 25kb.
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  • TalesinTalesin Our own little well of hate Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
    Use a better image editing program, or know how to massage PS to actually give you best compression.
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  • MantridMantrid Lockpick Join Date: 2003-12-07 Member: 24109Members
    edited November 2006
    And with modern connections, I don't see how thats a real issue.

    Which is not to say that pages and images shouldn't be designed with efficiency in mind, but really, almost everyone has at least DSL these days.

    Edit: We have the technology!
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  • TyrainTyrain Join Date: 2003-01-03 Member: 11746Members
    edited November 2006
    <!--quoteo(post=1578083:date=Nov 17 2006, 04:07 AM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Talesin @ Nov 17 2006, 04:07 AM) [snapback]1578083[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    Cutting avatar filesizes down further may end up happening. Planning for it now would not be ill-advised.
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    What are the current max allowed sizes? Not that it matters to me, just curious.


    Edit: ah, well, reading n'stuff:

    "Your avatar must be no bigger than 64 pixels by 64 pixels in size. Uploaded avatars from your computer must be no larger than 22 KB."
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  • TalesinTalesin Our own little well of hate Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
    Current limitations are 64x64 and 22KB. Which is the same filesize limit as signatures (400x75 & 22KB), for an image 13% the size.

    A reduction would not be unreasonable.
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  • QuaunautQuaunaut The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    <!--quoteo(post=1578089:date=Nov 16 2006, 07:15 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Talesin @ Nov 16 2006, 07:15 PM) [snapback]1578089[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    Current limitations are 64x64 and 22KB. Which is the same filesize limit as signatures (400x75 & 22KB), for an image 13% the size.

    A reduction would not be unreasonable.
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    I had to go gif with lowest settings to get it to this. Its not even that varied of a thing.

    Just because mine isn't made up of 4 colors doesn't mean its overdone.
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  • CForresterCForrester P0rk(h0p Join Date: 2002-10-05 Member: 1439Members, Constellation
    edited November 2006
    <!--quoteo(post=1578089:date=Nov 16 2006, 10:15 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Talesin @ Nov 16 2006, 10:15 PM) [snapback]1578089[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    Current limitations are 64x64 and 22KB. Which is the same filesize limit as signatures (400x75 & 22KB), for an image 13% the size.

    A reduction would not be unreasonable.
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    But it also wouldn't really be needed. 22 KB is VERY small, and anyone on a slow connection can always disable the display of avatars and sigs.

    <!--quoteo(post=1578091:date=Nov 16 2006, 10:17 PM:name=Quaunaut)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Quaunaut @ Nov 16 2006, 10:17 PM) [snapback]1578091[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    I had to go gif with lowest settings to get it to this. Its not even that varied of a thing.

    Just because mine isn't made up of 4 colors doesn't mean its overdone.
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Can you send me the uncompressed version of your avatar over AIM or something? I bet I could get it small enough.

    [Edit:] I'll host it too, if you want. Imageshack kinda sucks.
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  • enf0rcerenf0rcer intrigued... Join Date: 2003-03-16 Member: 14584Members
    Good old 64 pixel tall man. I too like the smaller avatars. It's just insane to look at once everyone has giant tags and 15 line long sigs.
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  • BlackMageBlackMage [citation needed] Join Date: 2003-06-18 Member: 17474Members, Constellation
    example of an actual 100x100px avatar.
    DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOUR FORUMS

    <img src="http://blackmage.org/bbs/src/1163191733982.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
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  • TalesinTalesin Our own little well of hate Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
    Originally the limit was there to keep the page loads 56K friendly. When you have (at best) 6KB/s, even a single avatar will take between 3-4 seconds. Assume 20 avatars, plus 20 full size sigs each thread-page. 140 seconds. Almost two and a half minutes to load a single page, not counting browser image cacheing, text, inline images from the forums, and so on.

    Even if people have DSL, keeping forum response snappy is important. True, people can disable avatars and sigs entirely. But as noted above, that makes it a little more difficult to pick out posts from people you know, if you're scrolling through a thread. Enabling a 'friendslist' for allowed avatars might solve the problem, but isn't outright worth the coding work.


    Short version:
    22KB is not small. 5-7K is small.
    JPGs are not always the most optimized.
    Avatars do not need to be ornate, sprawling affairs.
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  • BlackMageBlackMage [citation needed] Join Date: 2003-06-18 Member: 17474Members, Constellation
    don't forget PNG compression rates (now that IE's finally going to fully support the format)
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  • CForresterCForrester P0rk(h0p Join Date: 2002-10-05 Member: 1439Members, Constellation
    <!--quoteo(post=1578104:date=Nov 16 2006, 11:07 PM:name=Black_Mage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Black_Mage @ Nov 16 2006, 11:07 PM) [snapback]1578104[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    example of an actual 100x100px avatar.
    DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOUR FORUMS
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Yeah.

    <img src="http://www.brainferrets.com/other/resizedannoyingavatar.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

    <!--quoteo(post=1578107:date=Nov 16 2006, 11:18 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Talesin @ Nov 16 2006, 11:18 PM) [snapback]1578107[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    Avatars do not need to be ornate, sprawling affairs.
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    No, but a 100*100 limit would allow more creative freedom, even without an increase in maximum filesize. A more limiting dimension may provide an interesting challenge to some people, but a larger canvas would allow more creativity to a broader range of people.

    It's not like 100*100 breaks the tables or anything. From what I saw when the forums just came back up and people were a little confused about the size limits, they fit in just as well as the 64*64 avatars.

    While your opinion may be that avatars should only be for identification of the poster, other people enjoy being more creative with them. Why stifle some creativity when it doesn't seem that a small increase in size limits would bother very many people? If identification of the poster is the only concern, why not just turn off avatars completely, and let people identify others by their sigs (or vice versa) instead?
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  • MedHeadMedHead Join Date: 2002-12-19 Member: 11115Members, Constellation
    <!--quoteo(post=1578111:date=Nov 16 2006, 11:28 PM:name=Black_Mage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Black_Mage @ Nov 16 2006, 11:28 PM) [snapback]1578111[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    don't forget PNG compression rates (now that IE's finally going to fully support the format)
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Well, that's Internet Explorer for Windows XP and the upcoming Vista. Everyone on an older system (me, for the moment) don't have that option in Internet Explorer. I use Firefox, anyway.
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  • TalesinTalesin Our own little well of hate Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
    Short version, since people don't seem to have 'gotten it' from the gentle goading earlier in this thread, or from the previous thread.

    The forum avatar size limit is 64x64. This will not be increasing. Period.

    <!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->*LOCKED.*<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
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