I'm new to the board and just wanted to point out a few things, I didn't like.

1. One is all the animations, it can get annoying. Just keep it simple, if you have good content on you site people will come.

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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

I think you're talking about the boards. I think I agree, and I just changed my avatar (icon) so that it doesn't "flash," because of what you pointed out. However, in your profile, you have the option of disabling people's avatars (meaning you don't see them), and you can also disable automatic image showing (or whatever it is called).

As far as the icons are concerned, I use the simple, regular emoticons, and hardly ever use anything animated.

And dave, the other good news....if you used static icons, it's use less bandwidth

I avoid forums with alot of animations. Takes time
to load and takes alot of bandwidth.

Dave....Paul has a point there.

I just did a quick check, and the unanimated icons are between 1/2, and 1/10th the size of the other icons. Of course, only a couple of the icons are more than a kilobyte in size, but if a thread gets large, and a lot of different icons are used, the difference could add up.

Of course, it won't decrease overall site bandwidth (much) because it represents very little in terms of aggregate bandwidth....but even if you ignore the bandwidth issues, it simply slows down the end-users experience a bit, especially if on (god forbid) dialup.

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

Well, luckly, I have ADSL, but if there are alot of Picture
post, like in babe threads, then even the ADSL will choke
at bit while loading all those pics.

I won't mention any names, but there are other forums out
there that are loaded with animated pics in their sig blocks
and avatars. I don't mind a little bit, but when everyone
is doing it, it's to much.

What other animated pics are on here that are bothering you? The smiley faces?

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

I don't think emcron could be talking about these. Who would care if they are ~1k in size because you wouldn't even notice the download on a 56k modem. Besides, you download them everytime you make a new post.

emcron are you talking about the animated ads? I'm not sure if dave can get non animated versions but those ads are pretty much the livelihood of the site... other than that there really isn't any other animation on the site that I can see... I'm on a 56k modem and have no problem accessing the boards or site unless we're getting slashdotted

Hmm...so far as I'm aware, only Paul and I even have animated avatars, and of the smileys, only 12 of the 35 insertable smileys are animated. As for the Message Icons, only two of those are animated.

I checked their filesizes, and most of them are under 3K. Only one is over that, and it's about 7K. Furthermore, I think the avatars have to be a small filesize. I just checked mine, and it's only 2K. So there has to be something more that we're missing here. Can you point out what specifically is too big?

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I think the only thing "animated" was emcron

There's nothing wrong with the SLBoards that I can see.

That's why I'm here and not somewhere else.

The colors, style and layout are great.

I can't see what is problem is.

A few small avatars shouldn't distract anyone.

Banners are required for support and income of the forum.
(These are done in good taste and not overly large)

Dave, Cutriss, Tom, and Paul are all right about the other
facts of the board.

Cutriss said:

And Paul changed that for him!

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Serious Soldier

I'm on DSL so load times are not a problem, its the animation on the forums. ie smily faces, flames on a post indicating that its a hot topic, etc. I guess I'm just not use to it, I'll give it sometime and see how i feel about it.

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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

You might want to head on over to DSLReports and tweak your connection. It seems to be a problem with your connection loading these images.

Well, unless there's a problem with your connection or with your system, that shouldn't cause a load. That graphic is really tiny in size, and you only have to download it once. Your system should use that one graphic for every instance of it on the page.

Give us more info and we'll see what we can do to help!

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I think emcron is talking about the fact that they are animated and it is distracting, he's not talking about them being able to load....correct?

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing