What are your opinions about animated gif avatars?

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What are your opinions about animated gif avatars?

multimediocrity

I would like to know people's opinions about animated gif avatars.

Many people, especially those who are particularly computer-savvy, make animated gifs for their avatars. Are they cool? Annoying? Good if tasteful, bad if not?

What's your opinion?

Stephen_Philbin

I generally dislike them, but there are a few that I've liked. However, they all get old eventually. I'm not particulairly keen on the GIF format regardless of whether or not they are animated anyway. The all-or-nothing approach to opacity/transparency makes the feature almost completely useless, and loading animated GIFs from a server that's under heavy load makes them ugly and annoying.

That's just my opinion, though. You'll no doubt find plenty of people that think that the GIF format is better than sex.

multimediocrity

I actually think the simpler, the better. Animations are usually extra flare that detracts from the quality of the icon itself.

scragar

I have seen a few animated avatars that were subtle enough to actually be really really cool, I think someone on here once had an avatar of a duck where the eyes would flash, I really liked that one.

multimediocrity

I'm not saying they're all bad, but subtlety and tastefulness is important.

NogDog

They suck. Only a complete idiot would use one. Unless it's mine, which is so cool that it's the exception that proves the rule.

andr105

No, I'm not interested in such trifles.Just don't have much time for it

Sunny_G

scragar;1030177 wrote:
I have seen a few animated avatars that were subtle enough to actually be really really cool, I think someone on here once had an avatar of a duck where the eyes would flash, I really liked that one.

Thank you, thank you.

scragar

Sunny G;1031729 wrote:
Thank you, thank you.

You still on 666? I thought you would have posted somewhere else before now.

NogDog

scragar;1031766 wrote:
You still on 666? I thought you would have posted somewhere else before now.

Nope. As documented elsewhere in the Coffee Lounge, for whatever reason, Sunny G has decided that keeping his* post count at 666 is more important to him than actually contributing to the community in any of the "real" sub-forums. I think the admins should include Coffee Lounge posts in the post totals -- at least for a few weeks -- just to really p1$$ him off.

Sorry, I can't recall off the top of my head if you are male or female, so if the latter, just do a mental search/replace on my pronouns.

Stephen_Philbin

I had a look again, but I still couldn't find the option to bump his post count to 667. I know it can be done, because I've dropped my post count a few times a few years ago.

JPnyc

I find them annoying/distracting, and in the case of older computers, they take up unnecessary resource. Of course you can turn them off in most browsers...

GrizzlyTiger

Depending on what the image is i general like them.Though some can really distract my attention and such p me off.

Seawitch

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"][/FONT]I think they are usually like a mirror pendant in a car....a distraction!
That said they are still a case of what you do and how you do it.
One place I do have a large animated gif for an avatar is on an aircraft forum I'm with.
If you don't have one there:rolleyes: you'll be left behind! I'm called Seawitch there too and above is my avatar for that place alone..

Seawitch

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]Meanwhile I wonder how long I can put up with the lightning flash........[/FONT]:p

opifex

gifs aren't all that bad if they are tasteful AND optimized!

multimediocrity

Tasteful and subtle.

Stephen_Philbin

Tasteful and kept offline.

multimediocrity

I should make an avatar in Flash... which makes noise... and never stops animating based on math formulas I provide... and pops-up or gets larger when you mouse over it.

opifex

@Multimediocrity... that would be absolutely sinister... if tastefully done