New signature restrictions - I see little point.

[MrRandom]

Zelda Universe now appears to have a restriction on signature images of 400 pixels in length. The height restriction of 150 I can understand as it makes the thread displays bigger, but the length thing seems to serve no purpose, since 400 pixels is far too few to force the thread to expand in length.

I agree that we need some restriction, but I believe that the length limit should be extended considerably. Of course, this could just be me whining because my signature had a 420 pixel image that distorts terribly out of proportion if I shrink it, but I believe it's also a valid argument. So, counterarguments? Agreement? Banning of the malcontent? Take your best shots. >=D

[Cody]

New? The rule of 400x150 has been here for years. Where have you been?

[Awkin]

It isn't only about stretching the page, it's also for those of us with little monies/bandwidth/patience who don't want to have to wait for 40 massive images to load on top of everything else each time we load a page.

Think of the children. The children!

[Tiroth]

You can think about the children, Awkin. I will settle for worrying about what that would do to my computer (ie, annihilate it).

[Queen Kara of Pen Island]

420x150 pixels won't eat up too much bandwith, will it?

Because I agree. I like long sigs.

[MrRandom]

Well, I had a 420x105 image placed nicely in my sig and everything, then I went to make a slight change in the text (nothing with the graphics), and it gave me that 400x150 error. So perhaps it was a bug or some such in the image allowing code, or something else entirely, I'm not really sure. But I guarantee you I had

this absolute monster of a signature in my sig up until recently. I can call witnesses if you like

Oh, and I'm only proposing an increase of around 25 pixels. Allowing for 150px height, that's 3,750 pixels. Now, a pixel in a JPEG image is around 1 byte in size, so that amounts to 3,750 bytes, or approx. 3.66KB. Now, assuming everyone decides to take total advantage of the change and supersize their sigs, that's an extra 73.24 kilobytes of data on the 20 posts-per-page setting.

Assuming dial-up transfer rates to be 56kbps, that amounts to around, oh, 12 seconds extra download time in the worst case scenario. Allowing for fossilized technology, the total increase in load and processing time wouldn't exceed a minute. And this is assuming you're running DOS or something, and everyone on ZU suddenly gets a maximum sized banner traded for their old one. See what I'm getting at?

And one final thought: would it be possible to place more lenient restrictions, but some limit on filesize instead? Because the graphic example I provided is actually smaller and takes less time to load than a 400x150 (total 60,000px) image, by virtue of being only 420x105(total 44,100px). Seems rather silly to me

[Cody]

Well, if you try to upload an image to the server you'll get a size limit thing, but if you host the image on photobucket or whatever it should let you post wallpapers in your sig if you so wish.


And I like your signature better when it's smaller. P:

[Tiroth]

Originally Posted by MrRandom

Assuming dial-up transfer rates to be 56kbps, that amounts to around, oh, 12 seconds extra download time in the worst case scenario. Allowing for fossilized technology, the total increase in load and processing time wouldn't exceed a minute. And this is assuming you're running DOS or something, and everyone on ZU suddenly gets a maximum sized banner traded for their old one. See what I'm getting at?

Of course, this assumes that the computers used by everyone on ZU actually work properly, are not sub-standard by current specs, and never, ever crash for no apparent reason.

Which is, to put it bluntly, is completely and utterly wrong.

Trust me, this would be a problem, and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one with an older computer around here.

[Awkin]

Assuming dial-up transfer rates to be 56kbps, that amounts to around, oh, 12 seconds extra download time in the worst case scenario. Allowing for fossilized technology, the total increase in load and processing time wouldn't exceed a minute. And this is assuming you're running DOS or something, and everyone on ZU suddenly gets a maximum sized banner traded for their old one. See what I'm getting at?

Hey, I want you to, every time you click a link on Zu, take a step back from the monitor and wait a minute. Each and every time.

And then, at the end of the day, add up all the youth you've wasted and put it on the mantelpiece for prosperity.

Thing is sir, if we shift the boundary for this sig, then we have to shift the boundary for the next one -- see? Some forums have it far, far worse (To have a sig you need 1,000 posts mininum and it can be more than 70x200 pixels) -- and this is where our forebears chose to draw the line.

We don't see why the rules should change while your sig could, y'know? 'Cause if we let your sig slide, then we'll have to let this other guy's 430 sig, then his brother's 450 sig, and you see where that ends up?

[Scott]

Give a mouse a cookie...

400x150 has served us well for the entire existence of ZU. I don't think it's going to change. As Cody pointed out, so long as you don't upload to the server as a sig image specifically, there aren't real limits to the file, but if it's much wider than requirements, we'll notice, and kill it

[F3]

400x150 is a weird 8:3 aspect ratio. I dare you to make it a proper 3:1 and go 450x150.

[sugarpoultry]

400 x 150 is plenty enough space to get what you want out. Most of the advanced sig makers don't make that big of sigs anyway, so if you request for a sig, you'll get what you want in a generous amount of space.

I know this is a possibility, some sites have a fixed width, meaning you can cram as much stuff you want in your sig, but it will only show so much from top to bottom. It doesn't seem to cause any problems with slowing loading time for pages, course, I have high speed, I don't know what its like for Dial Up, but nobody seems to complain. Is that a possibility?

[Scott]

Clipping still loads the whole image, but I've never held the reason as "think of the poor!" It's mostly a "we don't want image clutter everywhere," while still allowing image-style expression.

Places that allow massive images aren't all that cool. As for increasing width 50px, uhm... I have no particular reason to say no to that, but... not at this time.

[sugarpoultry]

I agree that it can get cluttery, even with the limits we have now, it gets messy. People will do anything to cram as much junk they can in there. I know, I was once guilty of such wickedness.

[MrRandom]

Indeed, my sig was once made of four images aiming in that particular direction to achieve a width of 420px

Tiroth - My calculations assumed every computer works properly and gave wastage of 12 or so seconds. I multiplied by 5 to allow for slowing by the actual system, and I'm sure that even a UNIX system from back in '88 would be able to beat that. So unless you're suggesting that slightly larger sigs would cause crashes more often...

Awkin - You forget that in the slight loading time increase, you can be reading through the thread as the signatures load. It's not wasted time at all. Oh, and *steals your little image* I may end up using that

Scott - I was, in fact, inserting the image from photobucket. The particularly weird thing here is that I copypasted an old sig, ASCII character for ASCII character, that I'd had working in the past. Any ideas why it decided to object just now? It may be something to do with the fact that image links count towards your non-BBcode word total of 650, so I used TinyURL on all of them to allow more text.

[Tiroth]

Originally Posted by MrRandom

Tiroth - My calculations assumed every computer works properly and gave wastage of 12 or so seconds. I multiplied by 5 to allow for slowing by the actual system, and I'm sure that even a UNIX system from back in '88 would be able to beat that. So unless you're suggesting that slightly larger sigs would cause crashes more often...

Considering the effect that switching the default to 40 PPP had on my computer (ie, annihilated it in one shot), that's a reasonable assumption.

[MrRandom]

...o_O What sort of specs does that computer have? (Oh, and I think I'll just go with the sig Cody provided now. Thank you! )