Okay, my next interest is in getting images out of signatures. There are a couple of reasons for this.

* Some of them are rather long and take up a lot of space
* They load from various sites across the internet, which slows down loading the page.
* I want to add "attachments" to posts, for graphs and figures, and the thumbnails for those will compete with the sig images.

I've made a small change such that if you edit your sig (or add one if you don't already have one) then images will be stripped out. Existing images are fine for now, though I'm thinking I might at some point have them all moved to the profiles.

Those are the arguments for removing images, but there are arguments for keeping them too. They serve a purpose. They add more info about a person, such as team affiliation, participation in other projects, and some more "personality" that is otherwise hard to convey through typed text. So I'm trying to think of ways to make up for that loss.

One idea is to put team affiliation and country in the block at the left, under the name and avatar, to convey more info about the person.

Are there any other ideas? Will this put a damper on participation, or will it lead to a renaissance of ASCII art?

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

Since the software already allows for "Show images as links", isn't it easier to add a "Show images as links in signature" only? Not that I see any graphics, got it standard at Show images as links.

On some forums where there are smileys, that defies the purpose though. I wouldn't mind having the option to only kill images in signatures.

Yes, I know, the other option is to kill all signatures, but that defies the purpose as well. Especially for those of us who have only text in there or are pointing to the wiki.
____________
Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

Are there any other ideas? Will this put a damper on participation, or will it lead to a renaissance of ASCII art?

Imagine this in your signature. ;)

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$,,,$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"OOO"$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!OOO!$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$,"OOO",$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$,"OOOOOOO",$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$!"OOOOOOOOOOO"!$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$,"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO",$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$,1OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO7,$$$$$$$
$$$$$$,!OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"$$$$$$$
$$$$$$!OOOOOOOOO/""""'\OOOOOOOO1$$$$$$
$$$$$$"OOOOOOOOOO"$$$$!OOOOOOOO"$$$$$$
$$$$$$"OOOOOOOOOOO!$$$",OOOOOOO!$$$$$$
$$$$$$$",OOOOOOOOOO",$$$"""""""$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$"!OOOOOOOOOOO",$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$",OOOOOOOOOOO",$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$"OOOOOOOOOOOO",$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$"!OOOOOOOOOOOO"+$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"==OOOOOOOOOOO,$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$,,,,,,$$$$",OOOOOOOOOO",$$$$$$
$$$$$$,"OOOOOO',$$$$",OOOOOOOOO!$$$$$$
$$$$$$1OOOOOOOO."~~~"OOOOOOOOOO!$$$$$$
$$$$$$!OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO1$$$$$$$
$$$$$$",OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,"$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$",OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$1OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,1$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$"~~,OOOOOOOOOO,"$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"""1OOO1"'$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!OOO!$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$,OOO,$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"""$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
____________
Jord.

The BOINC FAQ Service.

Another place I visit has a limit of number of lines in a signature block, rather than (or maybe in addition to?) number of characters. That would eliminate lovely sigs like Jord showed. 8-)

MJ
____________
Hail, Poetry, thou heav'n-born maid!
Thou gildest e'en the pirate's trade.
Hail, flowing fount of sentiment!
Hail, all hail, divine emollient!

Are there any other ideas? Will this put a damper on participation, or will it lead to a renaissance of ASCII art?

It may not effect participation but it will increase the complaining, especially if the participants are used to having images in their signatures.

Your going to make me dig into my archives for my ASCII art cheat sheet disks and reconnect the old 5-1/4" floppy drive now aren't ya? LOL

Renaissance of ASCII art?
Arrr! I'll byte.
____________

Click and enter your name for your BOINC Statistics

NeoAmsterdam has some rather large ASCII art posted way back on SETI. ;)
____________

OK, so what's the difference between this

OK, so what's the difference between this

OK, so what's the difference between this

And this?

An Avatar of 100x100 is not too bad, especially if you keep on your server. My bottom signature bar, The Pirate, is only 19x350 which is also small. You could restrict the size, allow only one and let your users upload it to your server as well.

[quote]OK, so what's the difference between this

[xxxx]

And this?

If you ban images in sigs, then those that are determined to show them will just include them in the body of the text.

And I'm purposely quoting the body plus sigs just to show how annoying this could get.

19 pix high? That doesn't sound like much of a sig. People may stick with text. In which case you could get a max number of characters in size 29. If the avatars are allowed 100 pix in height so should the sig. As far as the width is concerned whether its 100 or 400 you still have blank unused space to the right of it; so as long as width of a sig doesn't stretch out the thread almost any width should be OK. What's the smallest resolution you think would be used? 640x480? Take the width of the screen, subtract the width of the userdata column on the left and the rest should be the sig width limit.
____________

19 pix high? That doesn't sound like much of a sig. ... If the avatars are allowed 100 pix in height so should the sig.

As far as the width is concerned whether its 100 or 400 you still have blank unused space to the right of it; so as long as width of a sig doesn't stretch out the thread almost any width should be OK. What's the smallest resolution you think would be used? 640x480? Take the width of the screen, subtract the width of the userdata column on the left and the rest should be the sig width limit.

That would still eliminate the most widely used sigs. Single project mundayweb sigs are 81 pix high, single project synergy sigs are 92 pix high. Combined sigs, including boincstats, are larger than those.
____________

There has to be a way to force an image resize in the text body and or signature. I know on the regular phpBB board I maintain, I have a mod to do that (where you can click on the resized image to load a full size image in a second instance of the browser) as well as a mod to keep people from accidently or deliberately stretching the thread with text to the point of being a chore to read it.

I'm beginning to hate visiting various forums where I constantly have to scroll left and right to read the posts and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Problems I've noticed that cause this are long URL's, Long lines with *-_ and other characters, wide images and people putting sig tags side by side instead on one on top of the other (would love to strange those peeps. LOL).

The thing is, as people sign up for new projects (and this is likely to happen), these images will tend to grow, as more project names get listed (once one starts accumulating credit for a new project). What's more, and moving forward, one can almost expect this to happen. Some of the reasons:

- New projects are starting up on BOINC as the days/months go by
- People will likely find a few projects comming out to be of interest, so sign up for more
- Faster processors (and now with AMD having gone multi-core with the X2 proc, and Conroe which is Intel's next generation x86-64 proc, to suceed the Pentium 4, will also be multi-proc), will allow people to crunch more
- Eventually dual proc CPU cores will be standard in all new AMD and Intel cores, leaving all new comp buyers with one of these
- Given all the above, people will be willing to sign up for more projects then in past, as it becomes more and more feasible and desireable (too many projects one might find interesting)

A decision here, could end up becomming an issue of whether people get to show their credit scores or not, which in part does add to the competitive nature in BOINC; as peeps try to show off their contributions. Else, stat images would need to be made the exception...

Unlike other images, they aren't static images either (as a picture would be); as the XML data that gets exported by the projects, results in updates to the credit information displayed... As to resizing, to a point it could work, though if things get shrunk too far (keeping in mind it's actually text these images are showing, such as credit scores, rather then graphics); if the font size gets too small, it could become unreadable without a magnifying glass...
____________

As to resizing, to a point it could work, though if things get shrunk too far (keeping in mind it's actually text these images are showing, such as credit scores, rather then graphics); if the font size gets too small, it could become unreadable without a magnifying glass...

A decision here, could end up becomming an issue of whether people get to show their credit scores or not, which in part does add to the competitive nature in BOINC; as peeps try to show off their contributions.

Ah, if it isn't BOINC related, then nah, wouldn't make a difference either way...

Only reason this makes a dif on BOINC, (or on a distributed computing project), is that the credit is a part of it. It's also what entices some to setup computing farms, so they get the "bragging rights" for having done so much...

Actually come to think of it, if it's a single project (yeah, I've seen some peole get competitive on folding@home, when they're on a website's team, and show it off in the forums), then something much like our credit counter in our user profile off to the left would serve this same purpose, which would make the "score card" totally redundent for them, hence un-needed. I'm assuming we're talking a DC project here, of course...
____________

I would like to use a longer signature, like this one I use at SIMAP
http://boinc.bio.wzw.tum.de/boincsimap/forum/viewtopic.php?t=211

So,
I whish a heigh restriction, and a drop of restricion on qty of images per sig

About witdh restriction , I believe that this is need too, sometimes
someone, instead of writing on multiple lines ... writes all the text
of a loong message into *one* line -:(

What was bad was when the one image enforcement went into effect. If you had more than one at the time it was ok, but if you changed your sig it wasnt. The problem was if you changed anything in your forum prefs it kicked out the extra images.
____________

An example of a "wide mode" mundayweb sig ...



... and another "two image" sig ... neither would be particularly distracting to me, after seeing so many different versions for so long ... I wonder if anyone actually looks at any of them much any more? However, I do very much agree that a height and width limit would be appropriate (or conversely, a "thread unstretch" option that works similar to the "remove whitespace" in some editors. Sniff the user's current browser width, and wrap at it - if it breaks a long text string, so be it (unless it's in a "code" block). If an image is too wide, display it as a link instead of the image itself.
____________
.

This feature has been restored. The signature block now has it's own CSS class (as it did before). And as before, have used this to set a maximum height for signatures. Anything larger (such as a large image, such as a large stat block) is truncated.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

This feature has been restored. The signature block now has it's own CSS class (as it did before). And as before, have used this to set a maximum height for signatures. Anything larger (such as a large image, such as a large stat block) is truncated.

Thank you. Any possiblity of allowing the most recent post first sort order to be selectable?

JKeck wrote:

Thank you. Any possiblity of allowing the most recent post first sort order to be selectable?

It is now, isn't it?

First, when posting a reply there is a problem with subscriptions (my posting this reply will test this).

JKeck wrote:

Thank you. Any possiblity of allowing the most recent post first sort order to be selectable?

It is now, isn't it?

It let me select it this time. It was showing before but would not save.