Your animated avater is distracting

[RaginDrage]

I honestly have no idea what you're implying here.

...or maybe I was too distracted by my avatar to process anything...

 

[DOOM GUY]

B-but... I love my dancing Marisa avatar, and tons of the other animated ones I've seen are cool too...

 

[Steve Waltz]

I will say that I find them "distracting" in the sense that if the person has an animated avatar it's more likely I won't learn their screen name and, in my eyes, they will forever be the person with the Tetris avatar or the Full Metal Jacket avatar. But I don't find them distracting in the same way that the OP does. I've never been in the middle of reading a post and then forgot what I just read because they have an animated avatar. That requires a really short attention span, I imagine.

 

[Olas]

I'm able to mentally tune them out. To be honest I'd probably make animated avatars for myself if I had access to an easy enough tool for it. Unfortunately the only way I know to create animated GIFs is to painstakingly craft the individual frames and then use an online program to compile them, which just isn't worth it.

Before I say anything else, let us get it out of the way: yes I know that pressing esc disables them.

Really? I'm trying it and it does nothing...

Only works on Firefox and Internet Explorer.

If you're using Chrome, esc doesn't do anything.

It doesn't seem to work in Firefox either, at least not for me, only IE. Not that I really care.

 

[SaikyoKid]

Mhm, hello boys... -WINKY FACE-
But yeah, I have this avatar in order to distract people from the bank vault they are guarding because it's amusing. And also it steals your soul.

Pole dancing bunny? But who else can I turn to now if I want to have a creepy Doctor Phil staring at me?

Having one myself, I really don't find the animated gifs that distracting. Even really bizarre ones like lacktheknack's freak out doll face one. Honestly, I find them more helpful to kinda remind me who's who as I'm atrocious at even regular people's names, let alone forum names.

 

[jademunky]

I will say that I find them "distracting" in the sense that if the person has an animated avatar it's more likely I won't learn their screen name and, in my eyes, they will forever be the person with the Tetris avatar or the Full Metal Jacket avatar. But I don't find them distracting in the same way that the OP does. I've never been in the middle of reading a post and then forgot what I just read because they have an animated avatar. That requires a really short attention span, I imagine.

Not that I have an unusually short attention span, only that flashing lights and images tend to pull the eye away from what I'm reading. Similar to some banner ads.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

Pole dancing bunny? But who else can I turn to now if I want to have a creepy Doctor Phil staring at me?

Having one myself, I really don't find the animated gifs that distracting. Even really bizarre ones like lacktheknack's freak out doll face one. Honestly, I find them more helpful to kinda remind me who's who as I'm atrocious at even regular people's names, let alone forum names.

Woah somebody remembers me, didn't expect that.
And yeah, I go by many names and faces... some call me Keith. Others call me 'The Man-Mountain of Wisdom', however, the authorities accept none of these and I am due in court on tuesday.
Ah, but I should really dig out my old flame, the elton-nigel-nyan cat.

 

[Steve Waltz]

I will say that I find them "distracting" in the sense that if the person has an animated avatar it's more likely I won't learn their screen name and, in my eyes, they will forever be the person with the Tetris avatar or the Full Metal Jacket avatar. But I don't find them distracting in the same way that the OP does. I've never been in the middle of reading a post and then forgot what I just read because they have an animated avatar. That requires a really short attention span, I imagine.

Not that I have an unusually short attention span, only that flashing lights and images tend to pull the eye away from what I'm reading. Similar to some banner ads.

Ah, I usually look at the flashy stuff like avatars and ads first. Then I'll read the context.

I hope you didn't take offense at that comment at all; I didn't mean any.

 

[jademunky]

Not that I have an unusually short attention span, only that flashing lights and images tend to pull the eye away from what I'm reading. Similar to some banner ads.

Ah, I usually look at the flashy stuff like avatars and ads first. Then I'll read the context.

I hope you didn't take offense at that comment at all; I didn't mean any. [/quote]

No offense taken at all

 

[cojo965]

Besides, how would anyone else remember me?

Well hopefully from the content of your opinions themselves?

Funny,I have no avatar and this is how I'm recognized here.

 

[Frezzato]

snip

I just recently decided to get back into animation and decided to start off simple. You just happen to be an incidental victim.

Believe it or not, this was a great exercise and I learned quite a few good lessons from this, like creating assets and allowing them to overlap the canvas. Also, working with layers in Photoshop for animation is tedious. I have to find a better way.

Did you create the original? The math worked out perfectly as the cubes are 10X10 pixels (12X12 accounting for included grid line overlap), leaving perfect gaps at the sides and bottom, and only a slight amount of excess at the top.

 

[Frezzato]

snip

Damn, I kinda guessed that the original was done on graph paper, and after seeing the original...

I love it. I love it tons more than mine. Damn, it has so much more charm!

 

[Frezzato]

snip

I suspect this change will be cause for debate. And should that happen, I can only say mea culpa!

 

[Laser Priest]

I've never found them that distracting. Hell, they're half of the entertainment for me.

My favourite was on a user back in my lurking days:

Spoiler: Warning: Image is mad small

 

[Snotnarok]

There's a thing to block that, just a rightclick and button press and it's gone, can't say what it is but it's this sci-fi future tech!

There's only a few that are distracting, mostly it's those who don't have seamless avatars, the ones that jerk back to the start really annoyingly. C'mon people get your start and end frames matching so it at least looks smooth! :V

 

[lacktheknack]

I suspect this change will be cause for debate. And should that happen, I can only say mea culpa!

I suspect you're right.

Some people will probably prefer the old version, because it had more 'charm' or something. (Even though I had hoped to fix it for ages, but was never able to.)

But the paperrrrrr effeeeeeeeeeeeeect

;___;

Yeah, chalk me up as one of those irritating traditionalists who liked the old one.

 

[Nomad]

Pressing esc is a viable workaround, but it is a lot of work having to press it every single time you switch or update a page. It adds up, since it's an additional task you have to remember doing over and over and over and over and over again.

If you're using Firefox, do this:

- Open a new tab.
- Type "about:config" in the address bar. (If it asks you if you're sure you want to meddle with the advanced settings, just say yes.)
- In the search box (just below the address bar), type "image.animation_mode"
- It should show up in the list just below the search box. Double click on it.
- In the text box that pops up, type "none"
- Click 'ok', and close the tab.

You might have to close and re-open Firefox for it to start working, but that should stop all animated gifs everywhere.

Not just animated avatars though, it will stop ALL animated gif images, everywhere on the internet. (So this might not be a very good solution if you're a regular user of imgur or reddit or whatever, where animated gifs are popular.)

Thanks for the tip! It would definitely be a good solution if it wasn't for the drawback you mention. I use IE rather than firefox, but it has a similar setting that disables all animations. I specifically want to disable only the avatars on this site, though. The other forums I frequent don't allow animated avatars, so this is the only place where it's a problem for me (and not enough of a problem for me to want to cripple my browser).