more space for forum signatures?

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brynn
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more space for forum signatures?

Postby brynn » Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:58 pm

Hi microUgly and Friends,
The current content of my forum signature uses all the space allowed (255 characters). I just changed my avatar to a flower, because so many new members and undoubtedly visitors think I'm male. I figured a flower should do the trick :D

The problem is that I still like my original av, and wanted to put it in my signature. Since there is not enough room for even the small amount text required to add the image (and still keep all the current text) I decided to make my entire signature into an image (and including a larger, and slightly edited version of the old av). To save space, I placed the original signature text in a horizontal format (3 short columns).

So after it's finally all finished, uploaded, and ready to put in the signature, I got an error message saying that the signature can only contain images that are a max of 60 px wide. My new signature image is 976 px wide!

I'm wondering if it would be possible to allow for either larger images, or even 50 more characters allowed would do the trick? Or maybe a height limit would make more sense than a width limit?

I guess I could make the new signature image really long and skinny, but it seems like that would take up unreasonable space in the forum.

By comparison, at least in my experience, most graphics forums have huge avatars, and signatures alike. To be honest, I think it's a bit much, at least some that I've seen. I thought that our forum was unique, because it isn't littered with the (often dark and disturbing) image signatures. All this time, I thought it was attributable to good taste, lol. Now I realize that it must be because of the 60 px limit! So I want to say that I certainly do appreciate that the limitations help.

Even 50 extra characters in the signature would probably work. I might have to eliminate the red text, but I could live with that :D

Any chance? Thanks for listening :D

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BobSongs
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Location: Montreal, Canada

Re: more space for forum signatures?

Postby BobSongs » Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:28 am

Off topic:
brynn? I have a suggestion for your text signature should you get the space to modify it: including a link to the bug-reporting site (Launch-pad).

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brynn
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Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2007 4:34 pm
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Re: more space for forum signatures?

Postby brynn » Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:38 am

That is indeed a good idea! And/or a link to "How to report bugs" topic.

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BobSongs
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Location: Montreal, Canada

Re: more space for forum signatures?

Postby BobSongs » Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:52 am

lol, sorry to keep pounding on this topic... but here's a second suggestion.

What if you trimmed your current text down to size for economy's sake?

Current:
To learn the basics of Inkscape:
To learn the basics and MUCH more:
Nice collections of tutorials:

This might free up some room in the mean time.

Less elegant? Yes.
More efficient? Debatable.
Enough room to add the "How to report bugs" link? Easily.

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BobSongs
Posts: 324
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:18 pm
Location: Montreal, Canada

Re: more space for forum signatures?

Postby BobSongs » Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:00 am

Pare it down some more? SURE!!

How about:
Inkscape Tutorials (basic and more advanced):

  • This should definitely free up room for another link or two.
  • Should this prove to be too short, simply restore text until you hit the 255 barrier.

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brynn
Posts: 10309
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2007 4:34 pm
Location: western USA
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Re: more space for forum signatures?

Postby brynn » Sat Apr 28, 2012 9:20 am

Thanks BobSongs :D
Sigh....maybe some magic.... Image ... Image ... Image ... :P
I could also lose the list tags, and just use a couple of hyphens or some other character instead. I'll see what I can do.....

Edit
Well, I'm not sure how I like the newer version. I took out the text color tags as well as the list tags. After that, I inserted the original tiny avatar, but was still 10 characters over the limit. Initially I had hosted it at ImageShack, which I've been using for years. But I've also used imgh.us for hosting SVGs, and they tend to have smaller URLs. So I uploaded the PNG, and the reduction in number of characters in the URL made the difference! But still no room for a Launchpad link.

One more thing I could do is for the 2 manuals, just have the URLs displayed, instead of the links. Well, the URL would be a link (like the tutorials links). But I like the text link using the manuals' titles. It seems more professional....I think?? Or maybe it's just a personal preference for knowing where I'm about to go when I click.

You know, I really am torn about the tiny avs and sigs. Part of me likes our clean and uncluttered forum. But another part of me would like larger avs and larger sigs, because you can do so much more with it. I think it makes the forum more fun, interesting, and potentially in some cases even inspiring. But I also wouldn't want the kind of thing I've seen on some graphics forums. I wish we could have signature images the full width of the message, but limit them to 100px height. I would really be surprised if there were a lot of the dark disturbing kind that I've seen (e.g. at GIMPTalk)....skulls, guns, fire, monsters, etc. I think our members here tend to be a little more mature.

Anyway, sorry to be rambling on..... I guess I'll use this new sig for a while. Maybe it will grow on me :D

PS - just to experiment with some different colors (it seems overly blue to me now....)

Image - Image - Image - Image - Image - Image


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