GMC Forums animated G.I.F. avatars

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Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
helo i have are notice that u cant use animated gif avatars
gravatar doesnt allow them and uploading them from u're PC makes them static not animated
why not use an avatar via IMAGE URL/ADRESS, why is that not possible its so weird
cuz u can use IMAGE URL/ADRESS images for normal posts, so why not for PROFILE PICTURRS?

weird huh?

So is this good idea yes or n0
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
I've been testing and I can enable gif avatars easily enough from the Admin CP. However I'm not sure I want to and I will need to discuss it with the other Admins before enabling it permanently. Personally I liked having an animated avatar, but I also understand that many people find them annoying and that they can impact site load times on slower computers...

So, if anyone here wants to put forward an opinion either way I'm open to listen though.... :)
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
well id like to say that depending on the speed off the animation then i will have epileptic fits, so if you feel like killing me off then do that, although there no guarantee il die form one, its more to do with choking on your tongue whist in a fit, same goes for the dark theme, i for one need the light theme and have to use some google plugin to change it but it still looks funky and weird.
so id say stay with static or give us the option to turn their animation off, i already have everyone signature blocked because of this, so anyone trying to get a bit of advertising there marketplace or other stuff in their sigs then i afraid your not going to get to many see them as quite a few don't like animated gifs, including some mods and staff.
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
I see where you guys are coming from. GIF's can be misused (epilepctic), and can increase loading times. Which could be a problem. But everything in this forum can be misused in some way, just nobody does that, and if it happens, there's always punishment. There could be rules/warnings for extra annoying or huge GIF's. Not enabling it because of potential mis-users would be stupid, since you are the one in power, not them. GIF's can be posted in posts or signatures, and signature/post GIF's are larger in size then profile pictures. Also, the scrapbook/art gallery have 50-post pages full of profile pictures, signatures, and very very big images in a lot of posts, and it really isn't a problem for anyone. And if it is, the ability to turn the animation off is just perfect for the very few inconveniences it has. And finally, the simplest argument for, we had it in the other forums, and I don't remember any problem ever with it, lol.

Thank you for discussing it with the other admins.
I really appreciate it that you always listen to the suggestions and opinions of everyone.

I predict we will see animated GIF avatars aviable in this forum in less then a month.
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
GIF's can be posted in posts or signatures, and signature/post GIF's are larger in size then profile pictures. Also, the scrapbook/art gallery have 50-post pages full of profile pictures, signatures, and very very big images in a lot of posts, and it really isn't a problem for anyone.
that's why i have sigs blocked, so just because a few like to put them in sigs, then everyone else who had normal show my work of type sigs, now don't get to show there work off, so its not just effecting those who cant handle them, its also effecting everyone else who wanted to use their sigs like most do, so imagine you had a marketplace asset i needed or wanted i might want in your sig, i will never know about it so cant ever buy it.
as for the gallery iv stayed out of there all together because of that too, so they do really hurt the forum more than you think, which is a shame really.
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
I see, size limit rules would actually be helpful for the whole forum then (siggies, posts, PP's), for GIF's I mean. That means not super long ones, or big resolution ones. Hmm.. maybe I did underestimate the trouble of the art gallery then. But yeah, the no animation option would be just perfect.
And while we're at it, let's repeat yet another time my annoying suggestion I've been begging since the start, less posts per page, which WOULD solve the loading time issues way more then disabling GIF avatars.
 
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Paolo Mazzon

Guest
I mean as long as the gif isn't epileptic and is a reasonable size I really don't see any reason why the shouldn't be allowed.
 

SnoutUp

Member
As an avid GIF user I'm against allowing them in avatars. Not because of load times, but because forum threads will risk starting to look like clown vomit (images/gifs in signatures can be bad enough). I really don't see real benefit for that, static avatars are recognizable enough and distracting people from content isn't what anyone wants. I would definitely use it if it was allowed, tho.

That being said, 50 thread replies per page is a bit of an overkill in layout like this, even if it doesn't slow down the loading significantly.

Another thing which is related to GIFs and would be actually beneficial is suggestion to add an async image loading plugin, which all forum engines should have by now. Otherwise my work-in-progress threads will start crashing browsers before reaching those 50 replies... :)

I've been testing and I can enable gif avatars easily enough from the Admin CP. However I'm not sure I want to and I will need to discuss it with the other Admins before enabling it permanently. Personally I liked having an animated avatar, but I also understand that many people find them annoying and that they can impact site load times on slower computers...

So, if anyone here wants to put forward an opinion either way I'm open to listen though.... :)
 
G

Guest User

Guest
I'm for and against GIF avatars. It's a nice feature to have, and I would certainly use it; but it can definitely be very annoying if someone abuses it.

A filesize limit (say around 3 MB) can be put in place so that it doesn't greatly affect slower computers, but of course, rules would have to be put into place to avoid epileptic/otherwise undesired animated avatars.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I'm all for it. I probably wouldn't use one myself, but it's a nice touch that can make someone feel a lot more alive and stuff or express more creativity, and in case someone abuses it, they can be dealt with. Page load times isn't really a concern IMO since I generally have a dozen pages loading in the background all the time anyway, so whenever I've finished reading one, the others have finished loading.
 

Roa

Member
Wow, if we're going to worry about bandwidth and animated gifs, how about getting rid of that rediculious 50kb size cap for a start?? I mean yikes. At least make it 96-112 for 200x200px image or something. The only thing you can do is lossy Jpeg and ultra compressed PNG with like 16bit color lol.
 
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Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
My avatar is like 10kb. Who needs that many colors anyway? :p <insert rant about why pixel art is just better here>

GIFs also have a smaller size the larger areas of the same color they have... I guess they're run-length-encoded?
 

Roa

Member
You get away with it because it was uploaded in PNG, with a limited pallet. It doesnt save a full 256color range if it doesnt have to. But yeah, right click your icon and click save as and see what it is in jpeg compression. Not nearly as impressive now is it? :) lol

And yeah, GIF does a similiar thing with colors, where it only saves pixels changed and not the entire layer. Only if you set it up that way and depending on the threshold, it can be lossy too.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
And yeah, GIF does a similiar thing with colors, where it only saves pixels changed and not the entire layer. Only if you set it up that way and depending on the threshold, it can be lossy too.
Yeah, that too... I was referring to in a single subimage, but by only storing changes you chop off a huge part of the filesize too. My old avatar had a loooooong animation with irregular blinking, but since only her eyes changed I could squeeze it into the size limit. (Plus, the irregularity in the animation made a lot of people think they were hallucinating, which is always fun)
 
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Aura

Guest
I concur that the 50 kilobytes limit on size of the avatars is pretty annoying. 50 KB is way too limiting. For instance, my avatar had to be converted into a JPG file because its original PNG file was larger than 50 KB. As a result, it lost its quality. If it's not possible to get it very high, a limit of (at least) 100 KB would suffice.

As for animated avatars, I advise strongly against allowing those due to the reasons already mentioned. I already see people complain about longer loading time due to 50 posts being shown at once. Allowing people to use animated avatars is going to cause a havoc. People with slow internet speeds are likely to be worst affected. Particularly those who use their mobile devices to ask questions in the Q&A forum. (I had to switch to a text-only mode to prevent my mobile browser from running out of memory... it's a devastating experience, so I'd suggest not allowing them)
 
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mysticjim

Guest
Just because the option the have an animated gif is there doesn't mean everyone will have one. I'm thinking back through most of the forums I've ever visited on a regular basis that has allowed them, and it's been most of them, I reckon only small percentage of people actually had them.

Plus, they're not a new thing, typical broadband speed over the last decade has gotten progressively faster, but you can stick a limit on the size of gif people could use akin to what was contemporary 10 years ago. Your gifs will be small, and a bit sketchy, but they'd hardly make us feel like we're accessing the website using dial up internet!

And I don't buy the explanation that they annoy too many people. We've already ascertained that only a minority will use them, surely the percentage of people who get annoyed by about 10% of peoples avatars is going to be less than that. By my reckoning peoples static avatars are statistically going to be more annoying! If you base your rules on the whim of such a tiny minority you'll be looking at banning dogs, custard, baked beans, rainbows and farting next.

I do sympathise with the previous poster who advises that animated gifs might trigger an epileptic seizure. Reckon that's got to be the only realistic and serious argument against it. I appreciate I'll probably sound hypocritical being that they're probably an even smaller minority, but I think the health risk, even to what will almost certainly be a tiny minority, probably has greater gravity. I genuinely didn't know animated gifs could cause seizures. I would feel guilty if I caused someone harm for the sake of me having an Avatar of Donald Trump being shot in the nuts or something similar. Although I would make it clear, if someone were to do that in reality, I wouldn't need the avatar! :)
 

Sabnock

Member
I mean as long as the gif isn't epileptic and is a reasonable size I really don't see any reason why the shouldn't be allowed.
Not sure the admins will appreciate having to QA and argue every time member uploads a new Avatar :D

i for one don't mind either way. i've never used an animated gif for a profile and have always tried to keep simple.
 

aamatniekss

Member
Im all for the animated avatars, maybe with a rule, that they cant be too crazy, like flashing epileptic lights and such.
 

Micah_DS

Member
At first, I was going to say that I'm for animated avatars, but now I'm not so sure. The avatars would certainly need to come with good rules to avoid overly intrusive / flashing junk.

Ultimately, I think it's best to leave it as is, and people can just continue to do animated gifs in their signatures. The reason being that people can turn off signatures in their preferences. Either that, or allow people to opt for avatars to be hidden as well? If that was an option, I'd say go ahead and let people have their animations. I'm just afraid of some younger people making some animated MLP thing or something and me not being able to turn it off.... I'm not sure I could handle such a horrible thing, not even in passing.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Not sure the admins will appreciate having to QA and argue every time member uploads a new Avatar :D
We generally work with a Java-based approach... let everything pass until something causes issues, and then handle that exception. :p
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
Again, the arguments against it are just invalid since they were debunked in previous posts.

-Almost no one will use GIF avatars, this has been proven over time with the previous GMC, and other forums
-Will animated GIF's make slower load times? No, because almost no one will use them, and a few small GIF's here and there are nothing compared to big images in signature posts
-Will animated GIF's be annoying? Probably not, since almost no one will use them, and even if people use GIF's, the chance of someone using an annoying GIF is smaller then 5% out of all GIF avatar users. Proof? People already have the possibility to post GIF's in signatures and posts, and I've never ever seen one annoying GIF. So why be afraid people will suddenly become evil if GIF avatars are enabled? That's stupid.
-Admins, shouldn't do a discussion eveyone posts a GIF avatar, they can decide on their own if they want to remove it/contact the person, just as with all crappy posts, or images. And even IF they have to discuss it, an annoying GIF avatar will be so extremely rare that it won't be an issue at all.
-People posting things that cause seizures to sensitive things is a huge danger, but that danger is WAY bigger with YouTube, TV, and signatures and posts then with animated GIF avatars.

So as you see, every possible problems with GIF avatars is already a bigger possible problem with a lot of other things. So not enabling GIF's would be stoohpitt.

And also:
-An ability to personally disable any GIF's on the forum would be convenient for some people (still unneeded), and easy to do.

Animated avatars? Please god no, at least not by default.
Care to motivate that response with proper arguments?
 
J

jackhigh24

Guest
And also:
-An ability to personally disable any GIF's on the forum would be convenient for some people (still unneeded), and easy to do.
no please, it is very definitely needed to be able to switch off someones animated avatar, and really there are not many people even wanting this, so why should we have it if its only a minority that want it.
if you had epilepsy i can guarantee you would see the very serious harm your suggestion can be, if we do have them in avatars then we need to be able to switch that persons off, the other option would be to handle it like the signatures, but that is far from ideal as i cant see anyone's signatures at all as it blocks them all, so if we do have them we need to be able to just block it animating and not block the image all together.
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
so why should we have it if its only a minority that want it.
I'm not even going to explain why that is a horrible argument....
Oh wait, I will.
>Most people don't mind G.I.F.'s
>Some people really want them
>The small minority wants to be able to disable them
And you would really want the option to disable them.
I WANT GIF avatars, but I CARE about the minority that hates them, like you, so that's why I would also want an option to disable them.

if you had epilepsy i can guarantee you would see the very serious harm your suggestion can be, if we do have them in avatars then we need to be able to switch that persons off, the other option would be to handle it like the signatures, but that is far from ideal as i cant see anyone's signatures at all as it blocks them all, so if we do have them we need to be able to just block it animating and not block the image all together.
Have you even READ what I have said? Because my post before just tells you why G.I.F. avatars won't be epilepsy-risky.
In short: "The danger of accidently seeing an epilepsy-trigger in animated G.I.F. avatars is WAY SMALLER then on TV, YouTube, and posts/signatures."
So if you don't want G.I.F.'s because you don't want to see an epilepsy trigger, you better stop watching YouTube, TV, and a lot of modern video games, those are more dangerous!
And again, maximum JUST 10% of all ACTIVE users will use a G.I.F., and ALMOST NO ONE, and NEVER will someone pick an epilepsy-triggerish avatar. The worst you can get, which is also rare is something a little "trippy", which is in no means "flasy".

Okay, I will change my quote then, for the sake of being clear.
-An ability to personally disable any GIF's on the forum would be convenient for some, and needed for others, and is very easy to include in the forum system.
 
J

jackhigh24

Guest
i dont watch tv, i dont watch anything much really, only physics lecture's and such, i dont play many games, i think you dont understand what courses fits, its certain rate of flickering and all animated gifs unless they have thousand of images will have that flicker, anything that has a refresh rate of less than 40 triggers a fit for most people with visually triggered epilepsy, and for the record i dont hate gifs, its the refresh rate only, as most gifs are short then almost every gif will be a trigger, you dont read what i said ether, if you did you would see i said it would be ok if we can stop the animation for a persons avatar, and i stated i already have blocked everyone's signatures, stop shouting as well, all the mixed up sized letters is also a trigger. go a spend a few days reading about it and what it does to someone's brain.
 
G

Gedor Games

Guest
Was not gif avatars allowed in the old forums? I remember that Nocturne had an animated avatar of pacman eating the head of a stickman.
 

JacPete

Member
maybe it would be cool if there would be an profile function to turn it on or off, so the audience that gets irritaded from it could turn it off. at least i would say who needs gif avatars ? the forum would like an main street in china.
 
G

Guest User

Guest
Hmm, didn't think of that. GIF avatars were perfectly fine on the old forums, why wouldn't they be fine here?
 
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