CSS width % in signatures.

[Nick]

Why is CSS width percentages not allowed in signatures? I think they should be. They don't break anything since they're in relation to the window size, and they're a lot neater in my opinion than just randomly stopping at the 600px limit. It makes sense for images to be maxed at a certain pixel width, but using 100% doesn't really create the problem that a, say, 1400px image would in breaking the tables and causing scrolling issues. I had thought several months ago we decided to allow this, but I probably am remembering something wrong. Not to mention, in our posts we aren't maxed out at any 600px limit and are free to use 100% all we want if we choose to do so. Just something I think should be discussed.

 

[3749374]

Because giant signatures are a needless monstrosity.

 

[Aquacorde]

tbh I feel like tall signatures are monstrosities rather than wide signatures. width% sigs don't stretch anything but height over like 300px-ish will make my page annoying to scroll through

+1 for width%

 

[Nick]

To me, that doesn't seem like a very good argument against it, but I'm not really sure what point you're arguing. Are you arguing that it's needless to have a 100% wide signature, or that it's unappealing? Re: it being needless, I think we're at the point in our ever-progressing community that arguing against something because there's really no immediate need for it is often something that holds us back. This is a small change, though, so I suppose it's a point that could be made since it doesn't really make the community any better. Still, I can't help but feel that arguing against something because you may find it to be unnecessary isn't really a fair case against it. But if you're arguing about it being a monstrosity, I think it's a matter of preference. Some may find it to be unappealing, but others may like them.

There are just some signature designs that make a lot more sense if it's 100% as opposed to cutting it off randomly. I think mine is one of them.

 

vs

 

Perhaps I'm being bias considering my signature is affected by this, but I mean am I wrong from a design perspective?? But I recall quite a few signatures during my time here that I personally disabled that made a lot of sense, and were really creative that were at 100% width. Josephine had a few.

Not to mention, it's allowed in our posts that we can have a 100% width in our CSS there. So why can't that translate into our signatures as well? Anna makes a point that there's a difference between width and height when it comes to how long or tall something is. Width doesn't really hinder any experiences, I don't think.

 

[Logan]

I find wide a signatures a reaalllll eyesore. 600x350 feels like plenty to me, in fact I think it is too much but that's a different story for a different day. Your signature wasn't just disabled for 100% width, but also for the fact that the CSS went wider than the allowed limit of 600 pixels (yes, CSS is included in the limit too). If we're going to allow 100% width than we'd, realistically, have to allow massively wide signatures altogether.

 

[Nick]

I know why my signature was disabled. That's why I made this thread, suggesting we allow 100% width.

If you guys decide against it, that's fair, but it doesn't hurt to bother to ask.

 

[Nihilego]

I'm fine with CSS width percentages being used in posts because the post is the part that you actually want to see and the lines of text in it are gonna be using the whole of the page anyway. When a signature comes and stretches over the entire window it just looks really, really jarring to me. They should be a little space to have an image or some text that you'd like to end your posts with, not something that insists on stretching itself over the entire width of my page whether I like it or not. I think that looks really obnoxious.

 

[Aquacorde]

But like Nick said, it's very much a design choice just like every other bit of signatures that are used. It may seem obnoxious to some, certainly, but I'm confident that people who know how to implement width% generally have better designs than a lot of people. Ya can't say that there aren't revolting, obnoxious signatures created within the rules we have now anyway; why would allowing one more feature be so bad, especially when it doesn't actually interrupt the flow of anything or really hinder the viewing experience?

And something I brought up before, long ago: we allow natural text wrapping in signatures. Plain text is allowed to fill the entire signature space if the user wants, but width% can't be used? That's just weird.

 

[Cherrim]

I personally don't like really wide signatures because they tend to be very distracting. Like, your signature when widened to take up the whole post space looks like a header and that would be really weird to me in the signature space. But that's personal preference.

My biggest issue with 100% signatures used to be that people would make the whole thing clickable and when you're switching between windows on your monitor you'd accidentally click anywhere in the area of their signature and end up clicking a link and it would be so annoying but... so long as that wasn't allowed, I don't see why it would be a big problem.

It's also just easier to police signatures when there's a strict limit on physical size. When the limit is 600px, you can usually tell at a glance if someone's breaking it or not. If all sigs were allowed to take up 100% of the horizontal screen space, it would be much harder to draw the line on what kinds of images are allowed. If someone's allowed to use THAT much space, instead of restricting their BG images to ~600x300, they could make them wallpaper-sized to accommodate most screens and use that as their sig image. Sure, most people would probably just tile a background image, or even no image, but it would be much more tempting to not do that and staff would have to check every time to make sure the file size is within the allowed constraints. Large images, even if simple in design, come with big file sizes which is definitely something I would never want in signatures. It's awful for people browsing on a bandwidth limit, which is most people on a mobile platform and plenty of people in more rural areas.

 

[Nick]

I was talking to Axton on Skype and he brought up the fact that his resolution is 2880x1800, and yeah I totally forgot that it looks completely different on different resolutions and how small my resolution is compared to others (to be honest when I made this thread I completely forgot that people had different resolutions in the first place), so I can understand the case against it for being an eyesore because a 100% width on a 2880px screen isn't really flattering.

 

[Hiatus]

Along with those issues that Cherrim pointed out, one other thing I could see happening is that it would bring much too unneeded attention to signatures. We visit threads to read posts and reply to them, but if this causes certain signatures to turn themselves into our focal point (at least in some regard), I don't exactly see what good that would do for us members. I'd love to be able to be in full control of my signature as far as customization goes, believe me, but if it winds up to be a bigger distraction than it currently might be, then… well, I suppose I'd be fine with having some limitations.

Edit: Oops, never mind; haven't seen the above post while writing this, haha.

 

[3749374]

I was talking to Axton on Skype and he brought up the fact that his resolution is 2880x1800, and yeah I totally forgot that it looks completely different on different resolutions and how small my resolution is compared to others (to be honest when I made this thread I completely forgot that people had different resolutions in the first place), so I can understand the case against it for being an eyesore because a 100% width on a 2880px screen isn't really flattering.

I'm using a 5K resolution in the studio at the moment, and large signatures like that are a real pain. They're off-putting on the eyes while scrolling down and reading, and look absurdly obnoxious. So from my perspective, I'm seeing a 5134px pink bar across my resolution, and only 308px of it is actually taken up by artwork. By the by, this is a wide image so beware.

Spoiler:

I'm aware that not all people have a resolution as large as this, and most of my setups do not have such a large resolution. However, I don't want people with bigger screens, and higher resolutions, to have to disable signatures so that a small few can experiment with css that takes up the entire width of browser window.

Forums should be about readability, not signature aesthetics. I feel that 100% width CSS signatures will get in the way of said readability, and that is why I'm opposed.

 

[Oryx]

I find it weird that the argument is boiling down to "I don't like how it looks on my screen so we shouldn't allow it." The whole point behind not having pictures too wide is because for people with lower resolutions it stretches the post, making it difficult to read. I always thought the 100% was a rule simply because as Cherrim pointed out, it's harder to police because you have to look at the code.

If my signature is allowed to be blinding colors, have a teleporting gif that grabs your attention and distracts you from the post, etc., then I don't see how having a wider signature is any worse and therefore should be banned. But the signature rules have always been hard to smooth out so they make sense.

 

[3749374]

I feel that bad colour co-ordination and gigantic signatures are two different animals. Difference there is, we allow these "blinding" signatures up to 600px in width. However, using a percentage tag, a resolution like mine would have to put up with the signature being thousands of pixels in width. I can put up with the occasional distracting signature up to 600px, a lot better than I'd like to see the occasional one being over 4000px in width. Allowing 100% width CSS signatures is asking for more trouble than its worth. There's also the whole "you can have a signature that's 100% in width if you use CSS, but not images, but you can have repeating background images in the CSS, but not multiple ones using IMG tags." It becomes convoluted and further delves the signature rules into subjectivity and grey areas.

That said, I'd love the option to have a live toggle on specific user's signatures. If there's something particularly distracting. That way if there's a signature that doesn't break the rules, but you don't particularly like, or find annoying, then you can prevent it from loading in the future. Much like "Hide User Customisations" but user specific, and simple to toggle.

 

[Aquacorde]

I kind of like the live toggle idea, though I'd probably use it more for fast gifs and obnoxious height rather than width. But idk about it permanently switching off signatures- I'd be so likely to forget about it and then people will come back with a really cute sig and Imma be missing out on that haha. Still gonna go with Touj on this tho:

I find it weird that the argument is boiling down to "I don't like how it looks on my screen so we shouldn't allow it." The whole point behind not having pictures too wide is because for people with lower resolutions it stretches the post, making it difficult to read. I always thought the 100% was a rule simply because as Cherrim pointed out, it's harder to police because you have to look at the code.

Still sums up the fundamental point that is really weird to me.

To those of you on massive resolutions though I don't understand how you can even read properly on that like wtf I have 1366x768 and I still reduce windows I'm reading something in to 2/3 of my screen. ._.

 

[Nick]

There's also the whole "you can have a signature that's 100% in width if you use CSS, but not images, but you can have repeating background images in the CSS, but not multiple ones using IMG tags." It becomes convoluted and further delves the signature rules into subjectivity and grey areas.

Even though I'm letting go of the 100% width suggestion, I feel like anyone who has even the most basic grasp of how CSS works would be able to understand that and why there's a difference between the two. Especially since the image width rule is there on the grounds that images break the width of the forum if they're too wide, and that creates messes and other problems for people on mobile devices.