Heya!
my problem:
I only got 64k internet (slooooooooooowlyyy) and sometimes, that's really annoying on JCF!
Some people have large animations or big pictures in their signature (sometimes > 500kb) , that maybe looks good but it takes so much time to load one thread!
And I'm sure not the only 64k-member (or 56k) here!
So, my idea is that there should be a filesize limit for the signature. Maybe 70kb or sth. like that! Then it would be more fun to read+post in this forum for the slow-internet-users!

Signatures have a maximum of 512 visible characters, and 1024 total characters. Signature images may not use more than 700 pixels horizontally, 200 pixels vertically, and 80KB in total file size.

 

*quick check*

Vegito, Satan, Grytolle and Chiyu have a signature bigger than 80k.

I think there is an option in your UserCP...

Originally Posted by Grytolle

I think there is an option in your UserCP...

No excuse. Why should anyone waste their bandwidth to download a signature image that they're only going to look at for 5 seconds at the most anyway?

Lol, so how are they above the limit, when they had to have their signature edited or someone would do it for them...

So if signatures are taking up too much bandwidth for you, then turn off signatures. You can do so right here, in the Thread Display Options.

Originally Posted by Odin

No excuse. Why should anyone waste their bandwidth to download a signature image that they're only going to look at for 5 seconds at the most anyway?

For the sam reason as they have to look at any of your posts, because they have to. Please do not steal their bandwidth by posting. An empty page is fastly browsed

On a sidenote, 500 Kb is the same as 0,5 MB... I find that sort of unlikely...

512 kB. */smart*

And, Grytolle, you are bypassing the rules.

How?:S

Your signature image was bigger than 80k. It looks like someone removed it anyway.

48.8kbps on a good day here. Large sig images are annyoing, especially wide ones. Not everyone runs their browser full-screen on a 1600x1200 setup. I generally run it windowed to somewhere between 640x480 and 800x600.

Originally Posted by BoggyB

48.8kbps on a good day here. Large sig images are annyoing, especially wide ones. Not everyone runs their browser full-screen on a 1600x1200 setup. I generally run it windowed to somewhere between 640x480 and 800x600.

I concur. Your signature does not have to be huge in order for it to look good.

The problem is that a lot of sig images look really bad when they're small. Though I don't have any images in my sig (as of now) I'm leaning more towards the "if you don't like them, turn sigs off then" side.

I can most probably reduce the filesize of any non-animated 700x200 image to less than 80k. Most people don't even try.

The 80kb limit was originally suggested by Disguise.

Originally Posted by Disguise

As for choosing a filesize, a nice high quality 750x250 jpg image with 10 compression is just under 60kb (with 30 compression it's at around 30k with no real visible loss), splitting the image into pieces increases the size by approx 10kb
...
Having said this, I would suggest a limit of about 80kb for all the images in a person's sig.

A problem might be that not everyone has access to image editing programs that can do this, or they might not have the knowledge to do so. But sers and I think others on this forum have offered to help people with images, so the limit will stand for now. We haven't been actively enforcing signature file sizes, mainly because they're more difficult to notice than image dimensions, but people should note that they are still breaking the rules if their signature images total more than 80kb.

I will happily have a go at shrinking images for people.

Some hints for those who try this themselves: if using gifs, reduce the number of colours used. When animating, if you want one frame to appear for longer than the rest then rather than repeating it use something like Microsoft GIF Animator that lets you set per-frame timings. Also, make sure you;re using the most approiate file format. As a rule of thumb, GIF for line-art, small stuff and anything animated. JPEG for photos and high-colour stuff. PNG for high-colour lineart, and large stuff where quality matters. For the same image, a JPEG will usually give the smallest file-size, but will also have the greatest loss of quality.

Send any image you can not shrink (filesize-wise) yourself to me
I will send the shrunken image back as soon as possible.

I can shrink images easily
And other people can too
Gimp