Footer Crackdown!

meta
1

Alright people!

It seems the mods have now agreed that it is time to start cracking down on footers. We were lenient before and allowed people to exceed file size and dimensions of footers.

We are now going to start being more strict on that kind of thing. Larger file sizes cause the site to load extremely slow on dial-ups and sometimes even broadband depending how many of those people post in one thread.

Also the oversized dimesions take up way too much space on smaller monitors. YES PEOPLE STILL USE 800x600!!! (Over 50% of web viewers actually, just in case someone wanted to bring that up).

We aren’t trying to be mean or unfair or anything like that. We are actually trying to be more fair to people accessing this forum.

The requirements for footers are as follow…

<B>Dimensions:</B> 300x60 or less
<B>File Size:</B> 15Kb or less (including all/any external files being loaded in)
<B>Text in Footers:</B> 2 lines of text are allowed below or above footers. If your footer is all text, 6 lines are allowed.

To show you that this rule applies to everyone you will notice my footer has changed (as well as avatar for matching purposes). This is because my footer didn’t meet the file size requirement. Mods are not an exception to this rule.

Oh yeah, and be sure not to be processor intensive in your footer as well…

[SIZE=1]Originally Posted by David[/SIZE]
There is another matter that I have been raising for a while, but which is a difficult thing to judge. I’d like people to take it into consideration when making footers.

If you have a Flash footer, you obviously can have a number of movie clips working off of mathmatics to produce movement (like mine below), or even a large number of tweens (or tweens with alpha levels of less than 100%). If You have 20 or so footers with 20 or so movie clips all moving at one time, it tends to bog down slower processors.
I don’t really want to state that there is a requirement for how many mc’s you can move around, but instead it will be on a case by case basis. If we get too many complaints about a footer’s processsor slow down, then you will be asked to change the footer.

Things to keep in mind. The top bogs on processor power.

  1. objects with an alpha of less than 100% moving over other objects.
  2. raster images broken apart, and moving.
  3. complex vector images (something with say 200 points and 400 lines)
  4. constantly updating text fields.
2

Eilsoe, how big is the .swf for my footer? I’ll change it to a gif format if it’s too big, I’m loathe to lose the cyborg. :slight_smile:

3

i will change my footer when i get home from school. in 2 hours=)

4

Thank GOD and it’s about time!

Maybe I’ll be able to enable footers again…

5

lost- what happens if some one doesnt follow the new rules. just wondering, because if it ever comes down to that.

(im changing mine when i get home, to be be exactly to code.)

=)

6

how bout the ones that take all your cpu time? i say restrict those as well.

7

Yeah… David suggested that in the old forums post as well… And it’s true…

Alot of your footers don’t have to be moving around with 10+ movieclips all over the place.

15 posts per page at a 10mc’s per post…

That’s 150 movieclips… And personally… That would slow up anyone’s fps to around 10.

8

I am personally in favor of a 3 MC limit…

but that is My Opinion only…

Rev

9

It should just be done on a visualization type bit… If you see something that bogs down your computer… Tell someone and you guys can have em fix it then.

10

that is what was decided, if we had a Secret Council, that is…

Rev

11

I’m not even a mod and somehow I knew wtf was going on…

Whhheeeee…

goes and takes a phychic test…

waits for it…
waits for it…
waits for it…

Negative…

****… :frowning:

12

*Originally posted by Alex *
**lost- what happens if some one doesnt follow the new rules. just wondering, because if it ever comes down to that.

(im changing mine when i get home, to be be exactly to code.)

=) **

They will be notified to change their footer to fit the requirements of course. What happens if they choose not to comply will be up to the mods.

And Thoriphes: I updated this thread with the processor intensive thing David stated in the old thread. I forgot to copy that over. My fault :slight_smile:

13

umm… what about if I load movies randomly. Like I have 3 movies which I load into my movie randomly but one at a time! So you see only one of them… :-\ The loaded movie individually doesn’t cross the 15kb line but all together let’s say it’s 20kb… :-
What about that?

14

As long as all the files loading into the file itself are less than 15K you are fine.

15

ha! i’ll never change my footer! it takes forever to load but it’s worth it! 15K, no way, not even close to it . . .

16

Mine is 12K and 305 x 65 because of the borders. I disagree with the movie clip limit, mine is all animations and no script so I need to use a lot of movie clips. I’m not making a new footer, period, I don’t have enough time. If you don’t like my footer then too bad!

:evil:

17

well maybe one day we’ll make a footer battle… i think lost is right to do that - and someone talked about loading text files from another location that was cpu intensive ? does that mean if i have se sort of random quote drawn from my website it will be cpu intensive? or is it just the ones that are constantly loading text?

18

One of the main problems is that it ties up bandwidth. So, if 10 people has dynamic content in their footers, and each one replies 3 times to a thread… you can see how it will bog down someone on dial-up… Plus, it is just not necessary.

Rev

19

hey rev,

nice footer, looks good=)

20

thanks.

I tried to make something that only animated if rolled over. That way, if I have posted 25 times in a thread, your CPU is not running all of the animations all of the time. Plus,

by david: after you see the footer 4 times, it becomes boring anyway

Rev