Signature image issues

[MCA]

Hi,

Ive been around on DCP for a few years, dont post very often but often around. I have been having a problem the past year or so and I wonder if it will/has been addressed. Many members have HUGE pictures or banners inside their signatures. I still have dial up and I am spending an enormous amount of time waiting for peoples signatures to load. While they are loading, they of course mess with the message board format, creating huge spaces and all sorts of other things. One member (madalumni) current has three rather large pictures in his signature that takes up alot of space on the page and take a very long time to load. Ive been a moderator/administrator on many message boards and I know that there is a way to limit image sizes in signatures. I feel that should be done here, I know I am not the only 56k user using DCP who is having this problem. Any help would be appreciated.

[Danielle]

We do try to limit massive ones, and I agree even on cable, they annoy me.

My best advice is to shut off signatures in "My Controls"... under Options/Board Settings. You can also shut off all pictures/avatars if you like there as well to speed things up in general.

If you are a FireFox user, download the AbBlock Plus extention where you can right click any image and it will automatically be blocked. This is what I do with signature images.

[Lance]

I actually have the same problem when I use my home computer. I just disable signatures. Go to "My Controls," click on "Board Settings," and then disable signature, avatars, smilies, etc. Hope that helps.

Hah, Danielle beat me to it. :)

[JohnD]

I understand the frustration and can assure you that you're not the only member that has had to endure the 'pain' associated with downloading/updating large images that are included in signatures. Sadly, with the forum software that we use - the ability to restrict image size in the signature is directly related to the feature that permits all images in a particular post. To restrict images in people's signatures would require that we impose that same restriction on the photos that are shared in places like our Historical DCI and DCA discussion forums - where images from the past are shared and archived in our systems.

Fortunately, as both Danielle and Lance have pointed out - there are a couple of things you can do on your end to make the dial-up network connection a bit more tolerable. If you have any questions on how to set those features - please contact one of our forum support team members. As was also mentioned, we DO keep an eye on the image sizes and ask people to adjust their signatures when we feel the image is too large or otherwise inappropriate.

Thank you for your question ..... and ongoing support.

-john

[sburstall]

We do try to limit massive ones, and I agree even on cable, they annoy me.

My best advice is to shut off signatures in "My Controls"... under Options/Board Settings. You can also shut off all pictures/avatars if you like there as well to speed things up in general.

If you are a FireFox user, download the AbBlock Plus extention where you can right click any image and it will automatically be blocked. This is what I do with signature images.

Many forum sites do set size limits of sigs because of that problem. One site I go have a size limit of 300 pixels x 500 pixels and not larger than 100 kb for signatures. Even club banners are limited in size to 75 x 225 pixels. Maybe DCP could also set this size limit.

BTW, these are guidelines. There's no official program that checks these numbers. The mods are the ones who would check and enforce this guideline.

Edited December 18, 2006 by sburstall

[Tristan]

Another solution is the AdBlock extension for Firefox. Got an image you don't want to see anymore? Right-click it and select "Adblock image..."