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Transparent avatars on forums


A.B.E.L.

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It would have to be a .gif file. Some animated .gif files can be obnoxious, so they were removed as a whole (from avatars). They work in the body. Here is an old animated .gif file I made a long time ago for example.

 

buttongps.gif

Edited by mtn-man
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Let me clarify.

It would have to be a .gif file for transparency to work. Some animated .gif files can be obnoxious, so they were removed as a whole (from avatars and from profile uploading). They work in the body of the forums, and you have to link to it and have it hosted elsewhere. Here is an old animated .gif file I made a long time ago for example, which I have hosted on one of my old web sites.

 

buttongps.gif

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I am not trying to upload an animated gif, but a simple static image as a gif with transparency.

 

Why not allow people to upload .png's then with transparency? that way you don't have to worry about animations yet still allow (proper) transparencies.

Edited by A.B.E.L.
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I am not trying to upload an animated gif, but a simple static image as a gif with transparency.

 

Why no allow people to upload .png's then with transparency? that way you don't have to worry about animations yet still allow (proper) transparencies.

 

I think mtn-man's point was that gif files were disabled because some people were abusing the animation.

 

Your suggestion to allow the png files is a valid one and could be handy.

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Because .pngs are often very large files would be my guess.

 

I think you have it backwards, .png's are actually much smaller than .jpg's or .gif's in my experience.

 

my current avatar is 19kb in .jpg, yet in .png is less than 5kb! so it would actually be BETTER as you'd use less bandwidth.

 

from wikipedia.org;

"Some versions of Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW and MS Paint provide poor PNG compression effort, further fueling the idea that PNG is larger than GIF. Many graphics programs (such as Apple's Preview software) save PNGs with large amounts of metadata and color-correction data that are generally unnecessary for Web viewing. Unoptimized PNG files from Adobe Fireworks are also notorious for this."

 

"In practice, well optimized and compressed PNG files are usually much smaller than GIF files (10 % to 50 % savings) for filesizes above about 100 bytes."

Edited by A.B.E.L.
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I don't see why it couldn't be changed, it'd be pretty simple. In fact I've run a forum before that also used invisionboard (like this one) so I _know_ it can be done.

 

I'm not trying to be a stickler, I'm just curious why we can't get true transparent avatars? and if there is an actual reason. it'd make a lot of people's avatars look A LOT better!

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I don't see why it couldn't be changed, it'd be pretty simple. In fact I've run a forum before that also used invisionboard (like this one) so I _know_ it can be done.
You are not uploading the .png files to the forum. You are uploading them to the GC.com web site and they are being displayed on the forum.

 

I'm not trying to be a stickler, I'm just curious why we can't get true transparent avatars? and if there is an actual reason. it'd make a lot of people's avatars look A LOT better!

I would estimate that less than 1 percent of users here would have the ability to save an image as a .png file, and that less than that probably care about that as a feature request (I can make a .png file and I could care less about that ability for my forum avatar, speaking personally). In the list of feature requests and bug fixes that are presented in the Geocaching.com Web Site Forum by the community for review by the administrators, I would think that this one probably ranks pretty low down the list.
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You are not uploading the .png files to the forum. You are uploading them to the GC.com web site and they are being displayed on the forum.

 

Yeah, forgot that part :/

 

I would estimate that less than 1 percent of users here would have the ability to save an image as a .png file, and that less than that probably care about that as a feature request (I can make a .png file and I could care less about that ability for my forum avatar, speaking personally). In the list of feature requests and bug fixes that are presented in the Geocaching.com Web Site Forum by the community for review by the administrators, I would think that this one probably ranks pretty low down the list.

 

Well its still a request. :o

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If it's as easy as checking the PNG box on the forum settings (which is probably is), I'd be for it. File size isn't an issue with images this small. That means there's really no downside to doing it, since the reasons for switching off GIFs (annoying animation, and now-expired copyright issues) don't apply to PNGs.

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I don't see why it couldn't be changed, it'd be pretty simple. In fact I've run a forum before that also used invisionboard (like this one) so I _know_ it can be done.
You are not uploading the .png files to the forum. You are uploading them to the GC.com web site and they are being displayed on the forum.

 

I'm not trying to be a stickler, I'm just curious why we can't get true transparent avatars? and if there is an actual reason. it'd make a lot of people's avatars look A LOT better!

I would estimate that less than 1 percent of users here would have the ability to save an image as a .png file, and that less than that probably care about that as a feature request (I can make a .png file and I could care less about that ability for my forum avatar, speaking personally). In the list of feature requests and bug fixes that are presented in the Geocaching.com Web Site Forum by the community for review by the administrators, I would think that this one probably ranks pretty low down the list.

 

A note/nit: Anyone who has Windows XP, and I presume Vista, has Microsoft Paint which will save as a PNG file. That would put us nearer the 70% mark of people able to save PNG files.

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I don't see why it couldn't be changed, it'd be pretty simple. In fact I've run a forum before that also used invisionboard (like this one) so I _know_ it can be done.
You are not uploading the .png files to the forum. You are uploading them to the GC.com web site and they are being displayed on the forum.

 

I'm not trying to be a stickler, I'm just curious why we can't get true transparent avatars? and if there is an actual reason. it'd make a lot of people's avatars look A LOT better!

I would estimate that less than 1 percent of users here would have the ability to save an image as a .png file, and that less than that probably care about that as a feature request (I can make a .png file and I could care less about that ability for my forum avatar, speaking personally). In the list of feature requests and bug fixes that are presented in the Geocaching.com Web Site Forum by the community for review by the administrators, I would think that this one probably ranks pretty low down the list.

 

A note/nit: Anyone who has Windows XP, and I presume Vista, has Microsoft Paint which will save as a PNG file. That would put us nearer the 70% mark of people able to save PNG files.

I have windows whatsit on four computers and I'm almost completely sure that I don't have a clue how to do whatever it is that you just said.

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I have windows whatsit on four computers and I'm almost completely sure that I don't have a clue how to do whatever it is that you just said.

 

There are many different types of image files:

.jpg

.gif

.bmp

.png

and many many others.

 

They each contain an image but are, shall we say, tailored for different uses.

 

In Microsoft Paint you can create an image and save it in the following formats:

1. Monochrome bitmap

2. 16 color bitmap

3. 256 color bitmap

4. 24-bit bitmap

5. JPEG

6. GIF

7. TIFF

8. PNG

 

They all have different pros and cons for different applications. The OP wanted to use PNG files becuase they allow for transparency to let the background color come through the image.

 

It you are interested further here is a good starting point: Link

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I have windows whatsit on four computers and I'm almost completely sure that I don't have a clue how to do whatever it is that you just said.

Then it sure is a good thing you posted in the thread to share your deep wisdom and knowledge! Of course, that doesn't seem to have ever stopped you before....

 

Now, on to the topic: It's not too hard to fake transparency for your avatar using a JPEG, although it won't work if the forums change color and it might not work if other people use different skins.

 

Since it is trivially easy to check for animated gifs anyway, there is no reason gifs couldn't be allowed. It's probably a matter of Groundspeak's priorities, and those priorities appear to have nothing to do wioth what percentage of users will use them. I would guess that much less than 1% of geocachers are all hot and bothered over an iPhone app, for example. Me, I would just like to see the basic site functionality work.

 

Anyway, I wouldn't advise anyone hold their breath waiting for this to happen.

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