Question New and looking for the 'right' look?

Wow. There's some good stuff in the Abyss. I may lose the next few hours perusing it. I don't if I can bring myself to give up the Man of La Mancha as an avatar, though. (Although now that I no longer go by Sir Read-a-Lot, it doesn't fit quite as well, so maybe I should change it. Decisions, decisions...)

Indeed, there is a lot of nice stuff there...

Still think I'm going to stick with mine though, since it's a custom modification to a pic that the artist gave me permission to use for this purpose.

I thought of it as Don Quixote

I'll stick with the inspiration of Super Bear. Seems appropriately whimsical.

Thanks Kristin, avatar swapped

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: Thanks Kristin, avatar swapped

Very nice, Phoenix. Good choice.

Nice one, looks very intent on what she's doing.

I did a bit of experimenting and, while I'm sure that Kristin is correct as it pertains about the software specs...

...in practice, after all the HTML, CSS, dynamic resizing and such gets applied, I found that the largest avatar I could actually use was 122x144 (portrait). Anything larger than that will be resized to fit into that box. And, if you work with a narrower viewport (like a smaller screen, or if you prefer not to let your browser take the entire screen), the avatar pic can be resized even smaller -- or entirely hidden.

It's entirely possible that this upper limit is an artifact of my particular setup, however. Maybe if you have a high-density display (Retina or similar) the software will deliver a larger image if available. Or maybe there are different skins for the software which allow for larger images.

As for *my* avatar, I have been using Patrick McNee for years and I fully intend to keep doing so, unless I receive a request from his estate to stop.

I have my black hole picture I made with photoshop. Also I should probably say the website wouldn't accept bitmap images and while it is easy to save the picture as a .jpg that might frustrate some people.

Uh... is there still any common use-case for .bmp images? I mean, a long time ago it was the only format Windows accepted for wallpapers, but nowadays, .jpg and .png rule. Well, with a side-order of .gif.

OTOH, I didn't test the system for any format other than .jpg. Does the site accepts .png avatars? What about .gif? What about *animated* .gif? (You KNOW that if it is allowed, someone will do it)

nukestar wrote: I have my black hole picture I made with photoshop. Also I should probably say the website wouldn't accept bitmap images and while it is easy to save the picture as a .jpg that might frustrate some people.

only vector graphics image formats are not bitmap image formats.
windows BMP is the bloatiest, jpg and gif are preferred online because they are much smaller image file size formats. not one website I have seen will accept bmp files.

When you save something with photoshop, bitmap is the first option, so naturally that is what my pictures are saved in (all three of them). And some websites still accept bitmap, I know because I have used that very same image in several places without resaving it.

Mine's a DIY effort in GIMP dating back several years (and used as my Twitter pic - not that I actively tweet much - it's far too busy to keep up!), based around the initialism I use. It stands for Mad IT Tech From Hell, inspired by the Bastard Operator From Hell stories - select a suitable font, skew it to be even more italicised than usual, rotate it so the verticals are now vertical (while the horizontals head diagonally upwards), rearrange it so the two T's are on top of each other, add the tail, then add the green / blue gradient converging on the lettering baseline.

[EDIT] Except I lost that version so I'm currently using an earlier version where the verticals aren't vertical. I also did a version with a circular fade-out at the edges which I've also deleted at some point... might get around to redrawing it one day...

Uhhh... it seems something changed regarding the avatars -- they are now smaller, and most of them have been replaced with a generic one. Well, Kristin has been doing a lot of tweaking and plugin-testing and jiggling at the knobs and possibly the odd percussive maintenance... maybe it's a temporary thing. I guess I'll hold off re-uploading mine for one or two days, or some official announcement on the subject.

Sir Lee wrote: Uhhh... it seems something changed regarding the avatars -- they are now smaller, and most of them have been replaced with a generic one. Well, Kristin has been doing a lot of tweaking and plugin-testing and jiggling at the knobs and possibly the odd percussive maintenance... maybe it's a temporary thing. I guess I'll hold off re-uploading mine for one or two days, or some official announcement on the subject.

Yeah, she's been working on trying to set up some additional extensions and features, and part of that apparently involves using Community Builder (CB) for managing profiles, with CB having a different setup for avatar pics. I went ahead and re-uploaded mine just to see how it works (and also our profile pages now have a slot for a banner image similar to facebook, which is kind of cool!). It's not like I can't just re-upload it again if Kristin has to change it again.

The one thing I best says it all would be from Betty Davis. Paraphrasing: "Fasten your seat belts its going to be a bumpy ride." And I mean that in the most complimentary way.

Kristin is testing the tires, learning the interior of the vehicle and in the most important aspect, not only taking it (and us) out for spin, she's finding out the limitations of what she has. So I'm ready for the roller coaster to keep us in motion and as we go through the loop de loops and fast hairpin turns, lets just enjoy the adventure she's taking us on. Because one day things will settle down and we'll all say how we missed the thrill of it all.

Just my 2 cents worth. No they're not indian heads either.

Can other people upload images for avatars? The option for me gone. The tab is there, I have 'save' and 'cancel' but no upload option~

And sorry if this is what you all were talking about with the tweaking stuff, but my issue sounds a bit different so I thought I'd report it in case. >_>;

Space Elf wrote: Can other people upload images for avatars? The option for me gone. The tab is there, I have 'save' and 'cancel' but no upload option~

And sorry if this is what you all were talking about with the tweaking stuff, but my issue sounds a bit different so I thought I'd report it in case. >_>;

It's under "Main Profile" then "Edit" (Update) then Portrait.

It's not gone, just a bit harder to find. Go to "Main Profile" (upper left hand corner of any page), and then look for the "edit" button on the upper left hand corner of the banner and click "Update Your Profile" Then click the tab that says "Portrait"

It took me some time to find as well.


Edit: Ninja'd

then you need to wait for image approval, unfortunately that message is missing from the process.

This is a question, not a complaint:

Are the "maximum dimensions" in the avatar upload form correct? Because the form implies that the largest avatar possible is 200px wide X 500px high, which is... an oddly elongated form factor.

Yep, I'm a dork. Thanks all.

Kristin Darken wrote: Also, while I haven't worked it in anywhere yet... the CB extension (Community Builder) has a neat presentation of a members list that is heavily based on the canvas/avatar thing.

ouches. extensions like that can twist things so members need to use the gravitar service to have anything other than the default av. no idea if the CB does that, but needing a different site to have functionality like that rubs me the wrong way, I refuse to use such services.

On a somewhat related (and far less useful) topic...

I was a bit bored and decided to look into customizing the "banner image" (what the software calls the "canvas image") that appears on top of your profile page:
whateleyacademy.net/index.php/main-profile

(Avatar and "canvas", along with other details, can be changed here: whateleyacademy.net/index.php/cb-profile-edit/userdetails )

Anyway... you can upload your own images, and the software will warn you that the maximum image dimensions are 1280x640 (otherwise it will be shrunk to fit), and maximum file size is 1.95 Mb, but that's not the whole story.

What I figure out experimenting with it is that:
a) the width of the "canvas" is proportional to the width of the browser viewport, but the height is fixed (that is, the aspect ratio of the canvas is variable)
b) Under no circumstances the software will leave "blank" areas around the canvas image: it will always shrink/expand the image so it covers the full canvas area, and then truncate it either vertically or horizontally to fit.

Which all results in: no matter what are your canvas image dimensions, some of it is bound to get truncated, depending on the screen size of the visitor. So, my best guess is: don't bother attempting to use a image where there is important info around the borders -- you are better off with something like landscapes, where a lot of the pic can be cropped out without it looking like crap.

So apparently your profile picture/avatar can vanish if you spend about half a month without logging on. I got it back obviously but still strange.

Kristin loaded a new module and it reset the avatar pictures and they needed to be reloaded.