Use of avatars in templates (2.1)

Started by shadow82x, December 05, 2013, 10:13:06 PM

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shadow82x

With the new alert system and messages dropdown which both contain user avatar's, I think we should begin enhancing other templates to use these avatar's too. For instance the addition of avatars on the Who's Online Page, Memberlist, Admin Pages and even Messageindex would improve the UX drastically.

On another related note, to enhance the memberlist template further, I think we should consider merging the "search for members" and "memberlist" into one page. It's very do-able and having everything in one place makes life easier.
Colin B
Former Spammer, Customize, & Support Team Member

Bigguy

Why would you need avatars on the admin pages. ?? Everything else seems cool. :)

shadow82x

I mean you can view the memberlist and search for members in the admin panel too. :P
Colin B
Former Spammer, Customize, & Support Team Member

Arantor

The main thing is that most things will end up doubling in size. The row size is 23px or thereabouts; the avatar size in the messages/alerts popups is 40px, the avatar size in the profile popup is 50px, even without padding that means we're going to end up hiking the page size vertically.

This has consequences.

For Who's Online, we need to consider whether we give guests the default avatar (which presumably we would). In probably any case we would make the default filter to be members rather than guests.

For Memberlist, it will just double in size since everyone would have an avatar even if it's the default.

Admin pages, that's predominantly the admin logs and maybe the search function... that's not so much of a benefit. The amount of entries per page as it stands is non-ideal to have avatars.

Message Index... the big problem that bothers me is about this is how cluttered it already is. Now, if we drop the post icons (the post/poll/hot topic one would have to go but possibly the per-post icon too), I can see us doing it. It's just about being cluttered.

I can think of a few others too, but I'll get into that separately because there are other issues.




Moving the search members into the main member list page... I'm not a fan. The memberlist is not fast, and if I go to the search page, I frequently just go via the main menu, just to avoid having to load the memberlist - certainly that's the case here.




There is one edge aspect to this: server hammering. The default avatar handling still pushes via index.php, so having plenty more avatars means plenty more requests and many more database queries.

Before we do this, I'd be very keen to make avatar handling be a custom directory by default... even mandatory.




One thing that does occur to me is to not have so much stuff on the memberlist and instead have a popup for a user's basic details (a la XenForo), don't know. It's all a bit conceptual.




Perhaps the memberlist needs an overhaul in general - either along the lines of Antechinus' mod, or perhaps more along the lines of XenForo's 'notable members', I don't know.

Arantor

Just to follow up on this with respect to how 2.1 is right now...

QuoteBefore we do this, I'd be very keen to make avatar handling be a custom directory by default... even mandatory.

This is how it is now, so this is less of a concern in general.

QuoteMessage Index... the big problem that bothers me is about this is how cluttered it already is. Now, if we drop the post icons (the post/poll/hot topic one would have to go but possibly the per-post icon too), I can see us doing it. It's just about being cluttered.

The post/poll/hot topic one is gone. There's been some other clean-up too but it still seems too busy to add it in even though it seems to be an option in 2.1... (which I'm not sure actually works :-X)

QuoteFor Who's Online, we need to consider whether we give guests the default avatar (which presumably we would). In probably any case we would make the default filter to be members rather than guests.

The default now is to use members so that's less of an issue anyway.

QuoteOne thing that does occur to me is to not have so much stuff on the memberlist and instead have a popup for a user's basic details (a la XenForo), don't know.

I'm still in favour of this, in fact more so in recent days.

AllanD

Very nice cleaning up the index page as an option. I like the idea of  having a popup for say for the memberlist and cut down on the other stuff.

I also think having the avatars show on the index makes a forum look cleaner and active. So if that can be an option in 2.1, it would be fantastic.
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PhuriousGeorge

Quote from: AllanD on January 14, 2014, 09:42:01 AM
I also think having the avatars show on the index makes a forum look cleaner and active. So if that can be an option in 2.1, it would be fantastic.

I don't know so much about making it look cleaner, IMHO I agree it makes it look more active, if only by putting individual personality on the page, rather than just text. Would help with the visual pulls of Human Engineering IMHO.

Arantor

I really do love how people misinterpret what I say.

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