Images in signatures

[outside looking in]

Hadn't thought about it until I saw it. I've always felt that having images in signatures clutters a forum pretty bad... especially when custom avatars are available for all members.

Will this be left as is?

Once again, just curious.

 

[sbcanada]

I'm against images in signatures, especially large ones.

 

[Justintime]

Originally posted by sbcanada
I'm against images in signatures, especially large ones.

Ditto!

 

[outside looking in]

Then let this thread just be a "I noticed that images are allowed" thread. You guys do what you think is best.

 

[JJR512]

I wonder whose post OLI was reading when this occurred to him?

Some forums allow them, some don't. Some have rules about the size, either dimensions or file size (or both). Obviously, I'd like to see images in signatures continue to be allowed.

The image in my signature is not actually one image, it is about 34 different images. I wrote a little program that runs on my website's server that runs every hour on the hour, and it randomly selects a new image and copies it to a new file named swimgfile.jpg, and I use that file name in my signature. Each image file is around 7kB (some a little more, some a little less). This random signature image system of mine uses no resources here, only on my own webspace.

For another website, which has smaller allowed image dimensions than my own, I have a second set of these images, duplicates of the first but reduced in size. These are sized 125 pixels tall by, I think, 292 wide, compared to what I currently use here, 150x350. This smaller set also has an average file size of, I believe, 5kB. If you would prefer I use that set, I will. I would rather use that set than not be able to use any at all.

 

[Justintime]

i've always wondered about that! nah its ok as it is.

 

[outside looking in]

Don't know who's post I was looking at JJR.

It's just personal preference, I think boards "look" better without them, but it doesn't bother me either. I'm just happy we have this site, the details are trivial.

 

[hardtellin]

To be honest w/ you(and this has nothing to do w/ jjr512's sig)I frickin hate pictures in a sig,Only because of newies that want huge pictures of god knows what in there sig...,It doesnt affect me a bit for speed,because my bandwith is quite large,but there are some users that are less fortunate and that just doesnt seem fair to spend minutes going from topic to topic.

I think a limit on size is definately in order,obviously jjr512's is fine.....

 

[fury]

Edit Options, under Profile, gives you the option to turn off viewing of other user's signatures (and avatars, aka userimages).

The issue of images in signatures may require more deep discussion before a decision is come about the fate of them.

In my humble opinion, images in signatures are fine so long as they do not take too long to load, are not huge, dimension-wise, and obviously, don't consist of porn.

Some might argue that images in signatures are unnecessary especially when avatars are available, and I will agree to a point that it does clutter up the thread sometimes when images are obstructive and invasive of screen space, but if someone wants to use acceptably sized images to spiff up their signature, e.g. to give links for people to contact them with, or just look pretty, then they're shit out of luck most of the time, because the avatars are single images limited to 90x90 and 24000 bytes, with no way to use the image as a link to someone's personal website or anything like that.

In any case, it will most likely just boil down to you guys asking me for a hack to be able to turn off images in signatures anyway

I'll look into doing something like that, and if it's not too difficult to do, I'll make it so. My experience with php as of yet is somewhat limited, but I think this may be something as simple as bypassing a code parsing for [ img] or < img if a switch in the user's profile is set to on.

 

[outside looking in]

I tried out that disable userimages option, but I didn't like the fact that it turned off avatar's as well. I also wondered if it would affect images conained in the body of a member's posts? Perhaps I'll turn it on and see.

I could do without seeing other people's avatars, but I have to see mine.

 

[fury]

It would only turn off avatars, the images in posts and signatures would still be there

 

[fury]

What would be preferrable, converting the image tag to a URL tag, making

for instance into http://otcentral.xibase.com/images/bblogo.gif, leaving out the image entirely with no proof that there is even an image tag in it, or replacing the whole thing with the text: [image]

The img into url part would probably be easier to implement and, in my opinion, is probably the best way to go, but I wanted to get the opinion of the people who would most likely use it before starting to work on it.

Also, would you want the option to allow you to disable images in either posts or signatures, or do you want it to disable all post and signature images in one neat little package? Too many options on the board may begin to slow it down eventually, but this is one feature that I think would be worth the slight slowdown, and at the moment, considering the relatively small amount of features on this board, I don't think bloated code is a problem just yet.

 

[outside looking in]

I think turning the image into the URL would certainly be way to go.

Also, if there could be separate options for disabling images in signatures, or posts, that would be really cool. I'd probably disable signature images but not post images.

If separating them isn't too much of a pain in the ass, I think it would be a great feature.