Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's What's with the avatars on the boards?

At first, I thought it was just my avatar, but after looking at everyone else's avatars, I see it's all of them. They all look HUGE, and awfully pixellated and stretched out of proportion. Any idea what's wrong with that?

I believe it's a problem just with avatars from http://www.lcficmbs.com. The mine is nice (it isn't from lcficmbs.com) and the avatars from others domains too.

It seems that the avatars that we choose from these boards are having a lower quality (as if a smaller image was being stretched). You can see that on "My Profile", too. Was there a problem in storing the larger images when the boards crashed recently (or when it was moved), or maybe the wrong images were linked?

EDIT: If you click on the avatar and try to see only the image (by itself), it seems that the avatars are 75 by 62 pixels (smaller than the required 100 by 100), and maybe trying to regulate the larger avatars of some users, a fixed size of 100x100 pixels was set for all images, stretched or shrunk?

EDIT2: Oops, Lara wrote the same thing, as I was editing this.

malu

My best guess would be they put in a routine to resize avatars - in case anyone has one bigger than 100x100 but that this ended up sizing *up* anything that was actually smaller than 100x100. (ie: sizes everything to 100x100 instead of only sizing down things that need it) It's what it looks like to the computer geek sitting on this side of the screen, anyway...

Probably it has to do with Wendy\'s reminder (scroll down to her reply almost at the end of the first page) about the size of the avatars.

malu

I'm pretty sure that Lara is right on. In my past experience as a board admin we tried to enforce something along these lines and this is what happened.

Luckily you can fix it so that it doesn't stretch. I'm sure no one has realized it is stretching the smaller images to 100x100 yet.

Yup, Annette put in a routine to 'force' avatars to the required 100 x 100 size. I'm not sure if she's already been made aware of this side issue, but I'll direct her to this thread anyway. I'm sure it won't be a huge issue to fix.

ETA: Or maybe they've already been fixed? Some of them look odd to me, but definitely not pixellated or huge - I'm afraid I don't pay enough attention at the best of times to know if they're back to normal.

LabRat

It seems it was fixed.

EDIT: But the ones that are larger than 100 pixels in one or both directions are larger, also. Or maybe it's a work in progress?

malu

Looks like it's fixed now to me.

Annette's removed the 'forced' program and opted instead for an update to the Avatar FAQ/instructions post advising of the required avatar size.

If there are still issues with your avatar, do contact the admins and let us know, using the link at the bottom of the forum.

LabRat

As written in the Avatar selection in "My Profile":

Maybe it would be a good idea to clarify that EACH SIDE of the avatar should not be larger than 100 pixels. I mean, I could always create an avatar with less than 100 x 100 = 10,000 pixels, but that would be too big on one side.

For example, I could create an avatar which is 80 x 120 pixels = 9,600 pixels, which would be less than 10,000 pixels.

I know I'm being dense in the interpretation of the message, but believe me, I've seen it happen. I'm a Teaching Assistant for Calculus I, and some students' interpretations to word problems can cause the most weird conflicts (I don't mean to insult any student out there).

malu

I don't think it's necessary... People are used to seeing measurements of size as length x width (or width x length) and not multiplying them into area. We say photos are 5x7, standard-sized notebook paper is 8.5x11, index cards are 3x5, etc. We know what that terminology means. On the other hand, I guess it couldn't hurt to be more specific. But I don't think it's unclear the way it is.

Kaylle

Yeah, I figure it should be clear enough and if anyone in future does misinterpret the rules that way, we'll simply cross that bridge when we get to it.

LabRat