# Main Site User Avatar Limit - 25K



## Dragoneer (Oct 16, 2006)

Alright, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sadly, that's what I do best!

We have identified that user avatars (AVs) are eating up far, FAR more bandwidth than is necessary. Some of them are so large that three single icons can more than double the size of download when viewing a user page. Yeah, we find that frustrating too!

Essentially, we could limit two things at this point to help conserve bandwidth (and costs!). 1) File size limits for uploading art, which are not the popular choice. 2) Avatar sizes. I've never believed in the existance of the number 1, so naturaly 2 was the only choice. It just happened to coincide that it was the lesser of the two evils as well. And, uh, y'know, we got a lot of good feedback regarding art sizes because we listen to you. Yes, you. Except for you, Suule. We still have it out for you.

As of now, the main site avatar limit is going to be 25K -- I know this may seem small, but it's quite generous for a mere 100x100 image. There's really no reason to have an image that small take up more space than some full size submissions. Current AVs will be grandfathered up to 50K, so if you're up to or right at that limit, you should be fine! We're asking users to reduce their avatar size of their own volition before we start to identify the largest offenders.

And before you start gathering outside our headquarters with torches, no, we're NOT going to go on a witch-hunt and mass-remove user icons. That doesn't mean we won't remove some of the larger AVs, but we're not going to make your life hell because you uploaded a larger AV when it was allowed. We're not like other art sites. =)

In the end, we'd rather dedicate our speed to serving up fine plate of art (with a hint of mint!). Icons are nice, but... well, I'm sure Icon Affinity can be right around the corner for inventive web designer!

For those of you with large AVs who feel disgruntled by this change, you may freely chew my ass out in this thread without fear of repercussion. For the rest of you, I hope you understand our decision. For the AVs weighing in at over 50K, my most humble of condolences, but we're gonna frag your ass!

THREE FRAGS LEFT!

-- Dragoneer


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## blackdragoon (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

yay my avatar is super small in size.

size=3.08 KB (3,160 bytes)
size on disk=4.00 KB (4,096 bytes)

is that small enough to earn a mint? *wags tail anxiously*


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## Arshes Nei (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

Heh I don't think mine are over 10k so


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## uncia2000 (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

Drat; 11k here, IIRC....

Yeah, 'though it's not ideal for everyone I'm sure, this AV filesize reduction should, in its own right, reduce traffic by considerably more than any "easy" reduction in hard/soft limit on image submission files.

Feel free to gnaw my fluffy ass, too, of course...


[ed.] some examples of what is currently on FA within (or just over) 25k, on the previous image filesize thread.


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## nobuyuki (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

what did suule ever do to you?  or me?  or anyone for that matter?  suulean logic is divine 8)


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## SevenFisher (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

Can I have mint? My avatar is only 9.5k :3

I wonder how people will feel about this, I know some of great artists that have avas that's around 70s to 110s - some are ace, but quite big in filesize.


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## Silverdragon00 (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

wow, amazed at how large some other people's are, as mine is a tick over 5 KB


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## Dragoneer (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*



			
				nobuyuki said:
			
		

> what did suule ever do to you?  or me?  or anyone for that matter?  suulean logic is divine 8)


Suule is just fun to razz on. =) Besides, as Forrest Gump would say, "he's my best-good buddy".


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## thelonelydragon (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

Eekkk! Mine's 36K.
*runs away...1 minute later*
There, fixed...16K.


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## Hanazawa (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

Animated avs are silly anyhow.


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## Dragoneer (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*



			
				thelonelydragon said:
			
		

> Eekkk! Mine's 36K.
> *runs away...1 minute later*
> There, fixed...16K.


You could have kept it.  Avatars that are up to 50K are "grandfathered in". So we'll let them slide...


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## crabby_the_frog (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

I'm not entirely sure about mine...

On my desktop it's saying 72k, after changing quality in photoshop it's 17k.

Is mine too big or what?


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## Hanazawa (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*



			
				crabby_the_frog said:
			
		

> I'm not entirely sure about mine...
> 
> On my desktop it's saying 72k, after changing quality in photoshop it's 17k.
> 
> Is mine too big or what?



On the mainsite? Your avatar is 4.5kb, which is way under the limit. You're super-fine.


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## WelcomeTheCollapse (Oct 16, 2006)

*RE: User Avatar Limit - 25K*

I'll keep that in mind while making mine. I usually take it as a rule of thumb to keep them under 10KB anyway.


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## Kaisanti (Oct 16, 2006)

Ive no idea how big mine is. I had some trouble uploading it as my usual one I had made sure was small and neet wouldn't work. So when this one did I stuffed it there and left it. o.o;;;

Edit* Ahh I clicked image properties and it say 6.4kb


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## Icarus (Oct 16, 2006)

lemme see here...
Main site:  16.1 Kb = 16,100 (yeah in kno big)
Here:        17.2 Kb = 17,200 (I think I'll be ok with this, right?)


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## izartist (Oct 16, 2006)

Mines 7.35k. nice and small while still looking quite nice.


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## kendrake (Oct 16, 2006)

I never knew that avatar size would affect bandwith like that. I've reduced mine from about 30K to about 6K to help out. I wanted to still keep an animated gif, and I was able to significantly reduce mine by using Babarosa Gif Animator to reduce the colors, and then further lower it with Power Gif Optimizer to trim it and crop it. Both programs are shareware with 30 day free trials, should anyone else want to do the same.


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## Shadou Kitsune (Oct 17, 2006)

hmm... 25 KB. Good thing mines on both the main site and here are significantly under that (main: 3.23 KB [size on disk: 4.00 KB], format: 100x100 monochrome non-animated gif; here: 1.43 KB [size on disk: 4.00 KB], format: 50x50 animated gif 18 frame count). Kinda funny that the size on disk on my computer are the same.


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## Rhainor (Oct 17, 2006)

Mine here is 4.66k.

I seem to remember checking the properties of the one on the main FA site, and seeing 3.3k.  I think that's the smallest one yet (in this thread at least).


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## Dragoneer (Oct 17, 2006)

kendrake said:
			
		

> I never knew that avatar size would affect bandwith like that. I've reduced mine from about 30K to about 6K to help out. I wanted to still keep an animated gif, and I was able to significantly reduce mine by using Babarosa Gif Animator to reduce the colors, and then further lower it with Power Gif Optimizer to trim it and crop it. Both programs are shareware with 30 day free trials, should anyone else want to do the same.


Well, let's make an assumption. There are almost 40,000 registered accounts on FA.

Let's say, hypothetically, that in a given week there are 3,000 users online.

2,000 of those users have slim' lil' 50K average icons.
500 of those users have 100K avatars that have been gaining weight.
300 of those users have a 150K AV.
200 have an AV that's an average of around 200, and their pants are starting to buckle.

Now, assuming each user had to every other active user's avatar once during the span of a few days...

2,000 x 50K = 100MB
 500 x 100K = 50MB
 300 x 150K = 45MB
 200 x 200K = 40MB
*Total: 235 MB of total avatars*

235 MB, when downloaded 3,000 times... is *705GB of data transferred just for viewing icons*. We can transfer that much in a week, yes. Now, if alll the icons were 25K at most we're looking at 75Mb total. That'd bring the total bandwidth for all downloaded avaters to 225GB, which is still hefty sum for a bunch of 100x100 icons.

While the above bandwidth doesn't happen in the span of a week simply due to icons, it does happen long term, and those are the numbers we have to look at. Mind you, the numbers aren't based off of any hard data. There are a lot of users with icons smaller than 10K, some whose avatars are over 1MB. The numbers are just used as a sort of template to show how things can potentially stack up.

** I am not responsible for math mistakes. I tried to be accurate, but I'm kinda tired.


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## blackdragoon (Oct 17, 2006)

that math makes my head hurt. but if you say so then i'll go along with it even if you are tired and can't think straight. i'm just glad mine is so tiny that it doesn't hurt the site. ofcourse that still leaves the matter of my art to deal with. and the stuff damaratus was sending me just stopped at 55% 'neer and i was unable to complete the transfer. oh well, maybe i can get him to re-send it and get started on that compression thing since i have one pic in particular that i need compressed. as it is 1.04 MB and i don't wanna hurt the site.


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## Umbreona (Oct 17, 2006)

I am amazed anyone has an Av over the limit even now, I mean mine is only 7.15 KB and its animated! Though it is small...


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## eb7w5yfe (Oct 17, 2006)

I am one of the evil ones!  135k: http://www.furaffinity.net/avatars/eb7w5yfe.gif.  You'll get no argument from me about the new limit; it's better than the alternatives.  It will be annoying trying to come up with a new avatar though: I may go back to the paint brushes.

Have you considered allowing people to link to off-site avatars?  I don't know that I'd actually take advantage of that feature, but I do have bandwidth going to waste right now.


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## Bokracroc (Oct 17, 2006)

5.81 KB (5946 bytes)
Whoo


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## lolcox (Oct 17, 2006)

... 
<-- Grillcat over there's only 2.6 kilobytes.


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## Suule (Oct 17, 2006)

I just have a 7 kB one :3

Was never into animating avatars...


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## imnohbody (Oct 17, 2006)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> There are a lot of users with icons smaller than 10K, some whose avatars are over 1MB.



... and some no-talent cheapskate slackers like me that just use the default FA av.


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## nrr (Oct 17, 2006)

Suule said:
			
		

> I just have a 7 kB one :3
> 
> Was never into animating avatars...


Oddly enough, my animated avatar is about that size...


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## Torin_Darkflight (Oct 17, 2006)

Now this is one thing I do agree with. Back when I was still on dialup, one of my big complaints with using FA was actually waiting for the avatars to finish loading, which sometimes takes longer than loading some large submissions. All those huge animated avatars that are like 15 or 20 seconds long are totally unnecessary. Not only do they take a long time to load on slower connections, but they slow down older computers, sometimes to a hideous almost unusable crawl (I know from experience, I frequently visit FA on my old K6 433MHz laptop). The more moving animations there are on screen, the slower everything goes, because they're using up 100% of the processing power. Older computers really can't handle that kind of stress, and I almost guarantee I'm not the only person who has such problems with large numbers of animated avatars on FA slowing down their computers.

Anyway...my avatar is only 5K, so I'm quite good there. I'm glad this was chosen as opposed to hard submission size limits, because like I said in the other thread, even though I'd be willing to reupload smaller versions of my art, I really don't want to have to because of how insanely long it would take. I imagine others are in similar situations.


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## Aspidel (Oct 17, 2006)

It's already possible to have a cool avatar below 15K. This one is below 10K.


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## NightfallGemini (Oct 17, 2006)

let us use off-site avatars. like, say we put something up on imageshack. let us link that to become our avatar like every forum that is smart does.


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## Aikon (Oct 17, 2006)

Why don't you remove the "Is watching..." list on users page to reduce the amount even further?  I always thought of this is as being unpractical anyway.  

BTW 25K is comfortable with legroom to spare, even 20K is acceptable to me.  Since I'm a tightwad I wouldn't grandfather anything in... maybe 5K over the limit but that's it.  Signs of things to come when I'm pushin' 60...


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## Egypt Urnash (Oct 17, 2006)

Man, I've uploaded _finished images_ smaller than 50k.

Amusingly enough, the icon I use on FA is 40k, what with four slow-moving frames and the dot patterns... I think I'll change it.


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## Umbreona (Oct 17, 2006)

Aikon said:
			
		

> Why don't you remove the "Is watching..." list on users page to reduce the amount even further?  I always thought of this is as being unpractical anyway.
> 
> BTW 25K is comfortable with legroom to spare, even 20K is acceptable to me.  Since I'm a tightwad I wouldn't grandfather anything in... maybe 5K over the limit but that's it.  Signs of things to come when I'm pushin' 60...



I have to agree here. Just listing the watcher's names and having a link back to them should be good enough. Having all those icons there must be a real drain and when I was on Dailup it lagged me pretty good and most of them would just time out anyway.

Just say no to Avatar Spam! Breehehe.


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## Silver Fenrir (Oct 17, 2006)

I WAS FRAMED

I ditched the o so heavy (200KB) avatar for Terry Bogard.  You KNOW I'm a gay Fur now.


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## Dragoneer (Oct 17, 2006)

NightfallGemini said:
			
		

> let us use off-site avatars. like, say we put something up on imageshack. let us link that to become our avatar like every forum that is smart does.


That's possible, but then moderating becomes an issue... and I'd rather keep everyting offsite. It's a bandwidth issue and a courtesy issue both.

What's to stop somebody from making a 5mb or 10mb animated avatar for the sole purpose of using it just to piss people off by having to spend ages downloading it? That'd kill people on dialup


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## Dragoneer (Oct 17, 2006)

Aikon said:
			
		

> Why don't you remove the "Is watching..." list on users page to reduce the amount even further?  I always thought of this is as being unpractical anyway.


Well, we cut the numbers down a bit to help further. =)


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## uncia2000 (Oct 17, 2006)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> That's possible, but then moderating becomes an issue... and I'd rather keep everyting offsite.



Or on-site, as the case may be...



			
				Dragoneer said:
			
		

> What's to stop somebody from making a 5mb or 10mb animated avatar for the sole purpose of using it just to piss people off by having to spend ages downloading it? That'd kill people on dialup



*nod nods*.

Whereas with the recent changes, we're now free to get flooded by a new wave of dialup users who were otherwise frustrated at their inability to use the community "properly" before.
A smoother ride for everyone, and traffic back up again....

_*...ponders*_

I'm sure there's something wrong with that statement.


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## eb7w5yfe (Oct 17, 2006)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> What's to stop somebody from making a 5mb or 10mb animated avatar for the sole purpose of using it just to piss people off by having to spend ages downloading it? That'd kill people on dialup



There's no preference to turn off user avatars?  I never looked for one because I've had a cable modem for long enough (9 years) that dialup is a distant and happily forgotten memory, but I just assumed that there was one.  It makes so much sense.  Any plan to add that option?


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## uncia2000 (Oct 17, 2006)

eb7w5yfe said:
			
		

> Any plan to add that option?



Yes, that has been discussed, thanks! It's a definite possibility. 

It would certainly be neater than the current pop-up blocker "solution" to help reduce bandwidth stress user-side, but only having a total on/off switch wouldn't cure the possible issue of externally-stored oversized avvies flooding a user's connection; and a "no external avvies only" switch would penalise those who behave, should there be any problems.
The current onsite, 25k limit, seems like a good compromise at present, and we'll be monitoring how well that works - both technically and from a community member p.o.v.


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## Cyrus649 (Oct 17, 2006)

mine 20-23k so I'm good ^^


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## Tikara (Oct 17, 2006)

hm.. mine both here and on the site are 30.1KB ... so.. am I safe from getting attacked? D:


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## uncia2000 (Oct 17, 2006)

Tikara said:
			
		

> hm.. mine both here and on the site are 30.1KB ... so.. am I safe from getting attacked? D:



_attacked...?

*grins toothily*_

Should be OK, but depends on whether Dragoneer takes that as a challenge to compress without any visible loss.


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## Devon (Oct 18, 2006)

I'm safe


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## uncia2000 (Oct 18, 2006)

Devon said:
			
		

> I'm safe



But 183k for your sigline image, above....? *blinks*


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## Twile (Oct 18, 2006)

Actually I've kinda been wondering about the "Is Watching" and "Watched By" sections. I just checked the page source and you're doing a big no-no, using the browser to resize the icons to 60x60. First of all it's bad because it can make icons look atrocious, even those of the same aspect ratio, because it's like it just cuts out lines and rows until the image fits, no blending of colors like with proper thumbnails. It's also bad because, and this relates to this thread, the browser still downloads the entire file at its full 100x100 size. This is bad either way you look at it: either it's taking up more bandwidth than an effectively 60x60 thumbnail needs, or it's losing detail when you "paid" for the full 100x100.

I would thus suggest to either increase the icon size back to 100x100 (and decrease the number visible to, say, a 4x3 patch ) if you want to squeeze the most quality out of your browsing MB, or to use the same thumbnail system you employ all over--submission thumbnails, for example--to reduce the bandwidth on those 60x60 icons you're displaying while simultaneously increasing quality. Of course this begs the question of what should be done with animated GIFs in these Watched/Watching sections, and I'd think that a 60x60 version of the first frame would do nicely.

Just my thoughts


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## Foxlink (Oct 18, 2006)

Well now.. LOL  mine is only a mere 4K.. LOL an' it's animated and cute  so there.  

=^_^=
-Fox


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## Dragoneer (Oct 18, 2006)

Foxlink said:
			
		

> Well now.. LOL  mine is only a mere 4K.. LOL an' it's animated and cute  so there.
> 
> =^_^=
> -Fox


I actually re-compressed somebody's animated avatar on FA, taking it down from 130K to 29K. I let them keep it.

While I did remove about 4.5MB of avatars, I tried to save them where and when I could. =)


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## dave hyena (Oct 18, 2006)

Twile said:
			
		

> Actually I've kinda been wondering about the "Is Watching" and "Watched By" sections. I just checked the page source and you're doing a big no-no, using the browser to resize the icons to 60x60.



It's true! 

<a href="http://www.furaffinity.net/user/frederickthewise/" target='_BLANK'>
<img alt="frederickthewise" src='http://www.furaffinity.net/avatars/frederickthewise.gif' *width='60' height='60'* onmouseover="EnterContent('ToolTip',frederickthewise','<img alt=avatar src=http://www.furaffinity.net/avatars/frederickthewise.gif>','100')

I really think it's best to just dump the display of avatars in that section all together and just have the names in text. You can fit more in and they take up far less bandwidth.


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## eb7w5yfe (Oct 18, 2006)

It looks rather awful now, but I managed to cut my 26 frame animated avatar from 135k down to 20k by reducing it from 256 colors to 3 (using dithering), and using transparency to optimize size (exact command: "gifsicle < avatar.gif --colors 3 --dither -O2  > avatar-lowcolor.gif").  So I am now in compliance with the new rules.

It would of course be possible to have an avatar that is small and still looks nice if it was not animated or was a shorter animation, but since pretty much every submission I make is an animation, it seems silly to have a static avatar.

Edit: just wanted to add, an avi version of my avatar, with full color and at 272x272 pixels, is only 33k.  Animated gifs are so very inefficient.


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## CyberFoxx (Oct 18, 2006)

*Sigh* If only the developers could agree on the implementations of the MNG and APNG formats, and the web browsers developers would follow those implementations, then decent sized and decent quality animated avatars would be possible.

Stupid archaic GIF format, even though it's patent-free now, it still sucks...

BTW, 1826 bytes for my non-animated JPG format avatar that I use here on the forums. Oddly ehough, it gets converted to GIF on the main site and blown up to 5593 bytes.


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## Twile (Oct 18, 2006)

CyberFoxx said:
			
		

> *Sigh* If only the developers could agree on the implementations of the MNG and APNG formats, and the web browsers developers would follow those implementations, then decent sized and decent quality animated avatars would be possible.
> 
> Stupid archaic GIF format, even though it's patent-free now, it still sucks...
> 
> BTW, 1826 bytes for my non-animated JPG format avatar that I use here on the forums. Oddly ehough, it gets converted to GIF on the main site and blown up to 5593 bytes.



Eh that's not odd at all, GIF is good for some purposes (PNG is better!) which generally includes images with few colors and sharp transitions. It's quite normal to turn a JPG into a GIF and see the quality drop while filesize goes up simply because that's not what it's good for.


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## Arshes Nei (Oct 18, 2006)

Yeah that is a big nono to not resize the images, but I think that happens with :iconusername: as well.

How about giving us the option to hide the "is watching" "watched by" on our pages, I'm sure that would take up a lot less bandwidth too!


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## benanderson (Oct 18, 2006)

6.06kb here! So no trouble there. ^.=.^
Tip for anyone... reducing the JPeg quality from 100% to 90% looks no different to the eye and the files size is smacked over the head with a frozen dairy treat.


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## Kryos (Oct 18, 2006)

Hey there all, new to the forums, been haunting FA for a while.  Anyway I was delighted to learn my avi is a little over 6kb, so I'm well under the limit, but I had a suggestion to you Dragoneer.  Perhaps that small avatar sizes aren't enough, perhaps you could put a limit on Signature sizes too?  I've notice how often the server gets bogged down, so I figure why not go the extra mile and eat away at a little more of the bandwith bandits?  Anyway, that's my two sense, you guys are doing a great job and I don't think this limit is unreasonable in the least.

Keep up the great job!

~Kryos


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## Rhainor (Oct 18, 2006)

It's not the forums that are the problem, it's the avatars on the main site.  Forum signature images are handled by offsite-linking.


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## Delian (Oct 18, 2006)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> I actually re-compressed somebody's animated avatar on FA, taking it down from 130K to 29K. I let them keep it.


And I recompressed yours from 6442 Bytes to 4555 Bytes with no visible loss 






 => 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




But, don't you think you should get someone else to do this kind of things? And you could do better things to do with your time. ;P


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## WelcomeTheCollapse (Oct 18, 2006)

Delian said:
			
		

> Dragoneer said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



'S visible, but barely. I think you could bump it down even more.


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## Waccoon (Oct 19, 2006)

If somebody needs help reducing the filesize of their avatar, I'm offering some help here:  Journal

There's a useful PNG compressor called PNGOUT which is simply the best PNG utility I've ever seen, though it is a command-line tool.  The author also has an IrfanView plugin version.

@eb7w5yfe:  You can probably increase the number of colors and get rid of dithering without much increase in filesize.  Dithering really does a number on compression.


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## eb7w5yfe (Oct 19, 2006)

Waccoon said:
			
		

> @eb7w5yfe:  You can probably increase the number of colors and get rid of dithering without much increase in filesize.  Dithering really does a number on compression.


I did try that, but anything more than 4 colors was over the 25k limit.  And 3 colors with dithering looks better than 4 colors without.


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## Twile (Oct 19, 2006)

Waccoon said:
			
		

> There's a useful PNG compressor called PNGOUT which is simply the best PNG utility I've ever seen, though it is a command-line tool.  The author also has an IrfanView plugin version.



Wait, did they change things so you can use PNG for your icon now? ^o_o> Because if they did then yay. JPEG for icons would also be good, not everyone needs them animated...


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## Rhainor (Oct 20, 2006)

Twile said:
			
		

> Wait, did they change things so you can use PNG for your icon now? ^o_o> Because if they did then yay. JPEG for icons would also be good, not everyone needs them animated...



When uploading my avatar, I chose a PNG format file.  At some point, it was converted to GIF format.


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## yak (Oct 20, 2006)

Anything you submit as an avatar is being converted to .gif, no matter what.
I do not know why was coded originally, but it is on the 'wishlist' of things for FA to change in the future.


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## RailRide (Oct 21, 2006)

My avatar here (my last one on the main site) was under the line, but that's irrelevant. During the earlier discussion, when talk turned to avatars, I was about to mouth off. But I looked at my mainsite avatar and was dismayed to see it weigh in at 77K. 

"Rats. gotta make a new one. The last stationary one I used sucked"

So I went into Ulead GIF Animator and dropped it to 16 colors. It's a tad dithered, but doesn't look all that different unless you're looking for imperfections.

And it's now something like 22K.

Looks like it's time for a happy dance.
(you do it, I'm tired)

---PCJ


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