32 replies to this topic

[cluthz]

I remember on the old forum, at least in the start there was pretty strict rules when it came to signatures.
I remember I actually asked to get them loosen up a bit, since links counted towards the total chars in the signature.

I kinda like we doesn't have much restrictions anymore, it seems some on the forum now are misusing the freedom we've been given.

It's kinda distracting reading thru a topic when there are signatures with several pictures and over twenty lines of text in it.
I think the longest signature here now have 27 lines of text..

[devilhunter]

Yeah, the long sigs are bugging me also.

sadly IPB hasn't a setting for managing signatures that phpBB had, so currently we can't define a limit to things. I also cannot find a modification for this.
IPB's thought process on this is that you choose for yourself to hide the signatures from others, by hovering over the signature and clicking the X on the far right; where you have the option to never see that users sigs again, or from all users .

This is of course complete bullocks compared to strict limits how far one should go with this.

Edit: Ive found a few hard template tweaks for truncating signatures.
I'll have a go with these a bit later.


EDIT2: ah, dammit. Found the settings for limiting content on signatures. A bit hidden in the ACP labyrinth, but right under my nose.
Sometimes i have to search via google to know what's possible in the settings here. The placement of the settings are such a mess in IP.Board 3.2, but as far as i've seen from the IP betas, 3.3 will make things a bit more logical.

[devilhunter]

OK, so what are you guys most comfortable for content via signatures?
3 things for the settings here:
- number of pictures
- size of pictures
- number of text lines

Sadly this will only apply for newly made signatures, so existing ones will stay as they are.

[cluthz]

devilhunter, on 18 February 2012 - 03:18 PM, said:

OK, so what are you guys most comfortable for content via signatures? 3 things for the settings here: - number of pictures - size of pictures - number of text lines Sadly this will only apply for newly made signatures, so existing ones will stay as they are.

I guess the people with the longest sigs could get a PM where they would be encouraged to change it.

A sig from 7-10 lines of text (with no pictures) is fine, because the sidebar takes some vertically space anyways, so with like 7 lines you can actually write 7-8 lines on the post and the sign won't make the post take more space.

As for pictures, I really don't think there should be more than one in a signature, but I've seen many people have two, but anything more than two is too much..

[GameGuy]

Was my sig the bad one...I made my images smaller...I liked that I could have my sig at 800x200 instead of the 800x100 like at the old forum...guess I took that too far.

[cluthz]

GameGuy, on 18 February 2012 - 04:07 PM, said:

Was my sig the bad one...I made my images smaller...I liked that I could have my sig at 800x200 instead of the 800x100 like at the old forum...guess I took that too far.

No, there was sigs far worse than your around here
Although your was on the "big side" it was far from the worst

[syao]

Hmm, what about having a soft-limit on the max height of the signature in pixel (and scrollbars if it exceeds that limit). I've seen that in some sites (and I can implement it as an easy css edit)

Something like this (180px in the example):

Spoiler

[cluthz]

Thats a very neat solution

[syao]

I've set it to 200px to test it out. Seems a reasonable size to me on my 13" MBP.

[Hrachya]

syao, on 20 February 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Hmm, what about having a soft-limit on the max height of the signature in pixel (and scrollbars if it exceeds that limit). I've seen that in some sites (and I can implement it as an easy css edit)

Something like this (180px in the example):

Spoiler

Very good idea thats what Minecraft Forums uses.

[doh123]

I find 99% of signatures annoying... no matter the size

[devilhunter]

syao, on 20 February 2012 - 10:12 PM, said:

I've set it to 200px to test it out. Seems a reasonable size to me on my 13" MBP.

This looks a bit stupid with the big blue scroll bars on every system other than Lion (Lion has those auto appearing scrollbars)

I've set up some hard limits for signatures for everyone.

1 Picture
picture size up to 800 x 150 pixel
up to two links in a sig
up to five lines of text.

[syao]

Right... Pre-Lion scrollbars are a little distracting... Does it look that bad on SL? I don't have one handy to give it a look right now :x

While the hard limits you set are good for new signatures, they won't help with previously created ones. I can tweak the css so that the scrollbars aren't displayed at all (and the overflow is just trimmed at 200px). At least as a temporary workaround until everyone has edited their signatures with the new hard limit. Should I?

(I like the CSS-based approaches because a power-user can edit their own browser's local default style sheet and change the way it's trimmed/scrolled/etc)

[hmtinc]

cluthz, on 18 February 2012 - 02:48 PM, said:

I remember on the old forum, at least in the start there was pretty strict rules when it came to signatures.
I remember I actually asked to get them loosen up a bit, since links counted towards the total chars in the signature.

I kinda like we doesn't have much restrictions anymore, it seems some on the forum now are misusing the freedom we've been given.

It's kinda distracting reading thru a topic when there are signatures with several pictures and over twenty lines of text in it.
I think the longest signature here now have 27 lines of text..

I think i was one the people with long signatures and if i was i have changed it to match new site polices for signatures .
I also Apologize for any inconvenience

[cluthz]

syao, on 22 February 2012 - 12:29 AM, said:

Right... Pre-Lion scrollbars are a little distracting... Does it look that bad on SL? I don't have one handy to give it a look right now :x

While the hard limits you set are good for new signatures, they won't help with previously created ones. I can tweak the css so that the scrollbars aren't displayed at all (and the overflow is just trimmed at 200px). At least as a temporary workaround until everyone has edited their signatures with the new hard limit. Should I?

(I like the CSS-based approaches because a power-user can edit their own browser's local default style sheet and change the way it's trimmed/scrolled/etc)

I'm on SL, and it ain't too bad.

[hmtinc]

devilhunter, on 18 February 2012 - 03:18 PM, said:

OK, so what are you guys most comfortable for content via signatures?
3 things for the settings here:
- number of pictures
- size of pictures
- number of text lines

Sadly this will only apply for newly made signatures, so existing ones will stay as they are.

syao, on 20 February 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Hmm, what about having a soft-limit on the max height of the signature in pixel (and scrollbars if it exceeds that limit). I've seen that in some sites (and I can implement it as an easy css edit)

Something like this (180px in the example):

Spoiler

syao, on 20 February 2012 - 10:12 PM, said:

I've set it to 200px to test it out. Seems a reasonable size to me on my 13" MBP.

I will follow all new signature Policies but can i suggest one thing .
Can you change the image width limit from 800px to 1000px ?
Its not a big change but it does allow more content to be put in a banner

A example of a 1000 px banner would be Syao's banner big difference in content from 800px

[devilhunter]

@hmtinc
done. width is 1000px now, height is 150px.
IPB automatically scales too long images, so the template doesn't break as i've seen now.

@syao
I have a better way to deal with already long sigs. see my first comment, i've found a way to automatically truncate the lenght of a signature.
Undo the scroll edit you've made to the template, and i'll add truncating to it.

[syao]

Alright, it's undone now. What kind of template tweak are you thinking of btw?

To be honest, I like this sort of css limits, so that the (power) user is allowed to have the last word on how things are displayed (other than being completely harmless on the server's resources). But no biggie :3

[devilhunter]

You've used overflow auto instead of hidden i see. Well, exact same code for this.
However, i've wanted to add some fading out effect for the last 30 or 40 pixels via a typical fade png, but i can't get it to work with the frame the signature is in. (only rock bottom of the page)
Also tried the gradient thing.
syao, would you like to try?

Also i've added some fading effect to the signatures, hover over one to show it fully. (to give the comment more visual than the signature)
Just an experiment, to see if you like it or not/or if this helps putting more attention into the actual comment.

[syao]

Ahh, overflow:hidden... yeah, that's what I wanted to use in my post #13, haha.

About the fade out effect, I added it as a gradient overlay. I used a css gradient, to avoid adding yet another http request for a png (we have already way too many http requests...)
This means Opera users should go complain to someone else than me (i.e. I'd start from the Opera devs... or use another browser ), if they really want to see the gradient. But the site layout won't be broken even if a browser doesn't support it. They'll just see it as it used to be until yesterday, with no fade effect.

About the :hover fading, I'm not sure. I liked it for the first minutes, then it started bugging me a little. Having the pics fade in might make them more distracting some times :x


Comments, everyone?

Spoiler

Btw, for those who want to see the full signatures without truncation, add this to your Stylish / local css / whatever method you use for local css hacks:

.signature { max-height: none; opacity: 1; }
.signature_grad_overlay { display: none; }

That's it.

[HairaideJinMasta]

SIGNATURE IS TOO BRIGHT WHY?!?!?!?!!

[GameGuy]

Hover over it and it wont be...I think the fade out is kind of annoying as when I scroll they all pop up anyway and thats more distracting then just having them without the fade.

[devilhunter]

GameGuy, on 29 February 2012 - 11:11 PM, said:

Hover over it and it wont be...I think the fade out is kind of annoying as when I scroll they all pop up anyway and thats more distracting then just having them without the fade.

Very well, then i'll disable it.
The fade in effect should only kick in when you hover over a signature longer than one second however...

[GameGuy]

Don't disable it if its just me complaining I can get over it...I think its just my browser doing it as I just tried safari and it didn't automatically show the sigs popping in.

[devilhunter]

well, so far there is zero interest in anything related like this.
you and syao voiced your opinions that you didn't like it.
Perhaps we can make a poll about this, or leave it as it is now.

I just thought the content of the post might get lost because of the many colorful banners.

[syao]

Well, I don't hate it, but don't like it either... let's say null vote (I have my own ways to deal clientside with websites css code in any case )

Btw, what's your main browser/version, GameGuy?

[GameGuy]

I use opera idk why I use it but its probably one of my plugins that I use that is messing with it when I scroll. And its Opera v11.61

[devilhunter]

the fade effect (among many) does not work with Opera Browsers.
Basically 1/3 of this board should not be working right for you at all, there is lots of HTML5 and javascript here, for lots of eye candy
It does however a fallback to Browsers that do not support these things, in a less good looking way though...

[GameGuy]

Is that why I get some like 40 lines of gibberish after I click post. It doesn't always happen but is annoying.

[cybershark]

Well, I have only one thing to say. I had never a problem with long sigs ^^ and that hovering stuff was really annoying. First time I saw it I believed it has something to do with my browser :X

Oh and I think the solution with the scroll bars is much better then cutting the sigs off :/

EDIT: What I absolutely don't like is the link restriction in the posts. I don't get it why u limited the links to only two url's.
I mean I had my ports in my signature with links:

4x4 Evo 2 [] Dawn of War Soulstorm [] Detonate [] Space Colony [] The Nations/Alien Nations 2 [] Tropico [] SkyDrift [] MetalDead

It's only one line, but I can't put it in my signature :/