Topic

Forum Improvements: Give us our Avatars.

The forums seem pretty bland compared to other sites.   Could they be spiced up at all with small character renderings for the avatar at least for the person creating the topic. 

Im terrible with names, but faces and avatars I can mostly recall.

Posted 16 months ago by Fusspawn Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Perhaps it should be a subscriber option, or just for the first post in a topic, some example art is linked below

    dl.dropbox.com/u/37455024/D...
    Posted 16 months ago by Fusspawn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1. The only problem with "I'm terrible with names, but faces and avatars I can mostly recall." is that avatars in Glitch seem prone to frequent change. Despite that, I agree it is always nice to have a face to put with a name.

    Also, I'd hope the icons used are bigger than he ones used on the homepage updates, which don't provide much detail at that size. Your example image is perfect, though there is probably an optimum trade off point between icon image size and how long it takes pages to load.
    Posted 16 months ago by The Cat Face Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I actually considered filesizes before suggesting this, I grabbed my character portrait of the glitch servers and took alook at the filesize. 

    ImageUrl = c2.glitch.bz/avatars/2011-0...
    Size: 21.01 kb,

     21 kb for quite a nice graphic improvement to the first post in a topic.

     (Im going to go out on a limb here an mention that the first post is also usually the one most read in a topic.  Barring Staff responses.)

    I compared it to a few other images loaded at the time same: 

    Mood Display Icons: 18 kb.
    Energy Symbols: 13 kb.
    a few other images are loaded as well.

    for a total of around 74kb. 

    15% extra bandwith per page load. I still think its a low cost improvement.

     
    Posted 16 months ago by Fusspawn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The use of "avatars only" to show which of my friends is online (on my home page) drives me crazy.  So many people change their appearance for every test,  if not more frequently. 
    Posted 16 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Certain things go *bump* in the night.
    Posted 16 months ago by Fusspawn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Fusspawn,  it's usually considered poor etiquette to bump your own topics. 

    The devs read all the topics, and make their own evaluation of whether the idea is workable at this stage in the game, or not.

    If the idea drifts off the front page, bumping isn't going to make it a better idea.  If enough people are excited about the topic, they'll keep it alive.  If someone has a similar idea and does a search, your topic will come up.  Self-promotion of your own ideas doesn't impress anyone. 
    Posted 16 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • also, the pages run for too long. there should be fewer posts per page.
    Posted 16 months ago by Grenadina Subscriber! | Permalink
  • 'Plain' isn't necessarily bad.  Pages that are decorated with jazzy stuff become harder to read, especially for people with smaller screen resolutions.  (And using forums on mobile devices... I'll agree that the pages get too long, especially for reading on a tiny phone screen, when a post is popular.) 

    Avatars are a nice suggestion, and they are pretty useful in many places.  But since they do change often .. I'm just not sure if they would provide enough information to make up for the added visual distraction.
    Posted 16 months ago by Lelu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I actually prefer version without avatars - it's simpler and cleaner.
    Posted 16 months ago by nekomaki Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with nekomaki - no avatars.
    Posted 16 months ago by Audaria Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Having a switch for avatar/no avatar would be trivial. I don't much care one way or the other, but having options is nice... assuming creating them has little impact on the options I want!
    Posted 16 months ago by Wounder Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with nekomaki and Audaria for the same reasons. There's less clutter. 

    And I'd like to note that I like how the names of posters are at the bottom of their post, rather than at the top or side. I like reading a post without necessarily knowing who it is at first :P
    Posted 16 months ago by Millie Subscriber! | Permalink