Avatars

[Jasujo]

TopsyTourny, you just go to User Control Panel in the top left. Then Profile. Then Edit avatar.

Personally, I like the 80x80 avatars better. 100x100 are fine if you are only seeing them once in a while on LJ or whatnot, but imo, it's too big to look at constantly. The nice smaller graphics everyone has also load faster and take less away from the actual content of the posts. It's just a decision PPT made quite a while ago.

[Hunter Lupe]

I know that with the amount of members on PPT uploading that size avatar it would be a strain on servers and such ...

80x80 avatars are approximately one-third smaller than 100x100 avatars. When you have thousands of avatars that are being used on PPT, it does make a significant difference.

[Since the topic is already bumped,] Let's clear this one up: the resources required from PPT, server-side, to increase that limit are insignificant. Storage is cheap, bandwidth is plentiful and static content uses little CPU power to serve. On the client side, it will make a minor difference to the avatar load times for those on slower connections - that would be mitigated by client-side cache for images and decent connection speeds to a point where it simply wouldn't matter.

There are no technical reasons for the current avatar (and, for that matter, signature) size restrictions; there are only historical and aesthetic ones. Those dimensions have worked well in the past, and generally still fulfill their purpose - providing you with enough space to display something memorable without dwarfing the post content itself. We also like to think we're special enough for people to bother with getting custom avatars to use here (and, as people have pointed out, there is a board or two where you could get help doing just that).

[On the whole, technical limitations are overstated, and we like our current policies. Thread hijack over, promise!]

[Shoyru_Lover]

*points up*

What the man said himself.