The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Okay, first of all, what is a GIF? But I have been thinking of getting a better profile picture.

"The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.
The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel thus allowing a single image to reference a palette of up to 256 distinct colors. The colors are chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.
GIF images are compressed using the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality. This compression technique was patented in 1985. Controversy over the licensing agreement between the patent holder, Unisys, and CompuServe in 1994 spurred the development of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) standard; since then all the relevant patents have expired." -Wikipedia

A GIF image is often animated/has multiple frames and is an image. This allows it to be used in html without having to use movie files or .swf files. Most GIFs are low quality and only allow 256 RGB colors. Each frame in a GIF has its own 256 colors and they are usually look low quality as well as "pixely" if the GIF image is large/has a big resolution. They are the most popular image format used for animations. All animations occur in loops. For example....

If you look closely at the blue areas, posterization occurs. This reduces the amount of colors used as well as lowering the image quality. Usually gradients will become Posterized. Posterization was used to make posters. Thats why its called.. poster-ization.

Idiot Version: An ugly small picture movie that keeps going on forever.

Basically what Patrick wants is animated images. For example, that would allow your signature to be Ezio performing an air assassination. I'll try to make some .gifs to show you guys what I mean

for example my current sig is a very high quality gif. Btw thx for the credit Patrick.

Haha. Nice copy and pasting of wikipedia, Draco
No problem, Shinkiro

I don't like animated pictures when reading THB. They are distracting and annoying. I prefer the calm, homely design as it is, without all the wiggle and jiggle.

How about disabling animated gifs in signatures, maybe?

It should be fairly easy to implement, but I agree with Al-Assass. I don't like all this wiggly-waggly when browsing a site.

I agree with Al-Assas and TLS. While they are entertaining and cool to look at, I find myself staring at them while I'm trying to read something. Definitely doesn't help the ADD.

Lolz, I'm sure bar gifs are the best way to go.

like gifs that are 50 x 400 or smaller

They're pretty thin and allow you to make a point without really being distracting

Userbars: 19 x 350

Fair point Draco. I would like people to be able to use Gifs but with minimum annoyance for others. Small/thin ones are the best bet

BTW, I wrote -Wikipedia

Clearly obvious. The rest is pretty much my explaination.

Oh and btw, I replaced my sig with user bars...

hey if you cant keep all your eyes of my sig then that is both your willpower and focus problem not mine. in my opinion we should be able to express our selves the way we want to.

I took the first step and upgraded the site from GD2 to Imagemagick. It at least has the potential to resize animated GIFs. It still doesn't work and the more I look into it, this is a known problem without a workaround. I'm not giving up just yet...

you should just go ask firestorm staby

Oh and stab guy, could you change the default site theme? I like the themes mercury, ash, coldblue, shiny tomato, and etc.

It would be interesting if you changed the website's default theme like every month. I believe there are christmas themes and etc for forums too?

If not, we've got a lot of talented members on these forums that could spice THB up a bit.

not the right thread draco

Dam you Shinkiro and you .gif signature that causes me to stare at it for 1 minute though I've already seen like 1000 loops of it....!!!!!!

Don't mind me for asking, but what are user bars for?

Totally agreed. I don't like animated stuff on forums any more than I want all the newspaper ads flashing and spinning while I try to read the newspaper. If I wanted to look at funky stuff like that, I'd go check out some flash animation sites instead of having little animations playing all over when I'm just trying to read text.

I use a Firefox extension to block animated GIFs on forums. I'd rather not have to though, as it's a pain in the ass to have to block them one by one.

Stab, is there any way to have the resized/site-stored animated GIFs stored in a separate directory so that one might be able to simply set a URL block for that entire directory to avoid seeing these distractions and not end up blocking everything else on the site?

I'm going to treat this as a joke.

It's looking like that won't be necessary as I haven't been able to get them to work at all.

There should be a size limit for .gifs. For example all .gifs should either under 100 px in height and under 500 px in width. This would reduce the problem of annoying .gifs

User bars are simply replacements for your signature that provide some information on you. For example, I play Steam, Portal, and I love... the hidden blade!

The old signature I had didn't say much. These user bars I'm using now are a bit more... informational and non large/ annoying. They also look pretty stylish.

Nice consideration for people with ADD/ADHD you have there.

Yes, we gamers control our ADD/ADHD through video games... I would have never made it through kindergarten if it weren't for digital man-slaughter. LOLJK I skipped kindergarten, I learned everything I needed from video games.

ohh please ADD and ADHD are just myths. Btw Draco at your size limits my gif just barely doesn't make it lol.

Do you have any notion of the scientific evidence backing these disorders?
There's indication that people with ADHD can have a non-properly functioning prefrontal cortex, which is where, for instance, logic resides. There's also some preliminary evidence that others with ADHD have problems in the brain centres to do with rewarding. This does not contradict eachother. ADHD and ADD are diagnosed by symptomatic criteria, but neural causes differ.

What I'm trying to say is: people with ADHD are substantially different, neurally speaking. Do you think autism is a myth as well? I assure you, it's not. One of my friends is autistic and just can't hear or recognize specific things no matter how hard he tries. It's comparable to me not being able to distinguish red from green without looking for longer than 30 seconds.

AHAHAHA UR COLOR BLIND TLS.

My ADD meant I didn't lack the concentration to read your rant. I've shown symptoms of ADD since I was a kid, but for some reason, I was never tested for it. Anyways, that lead to some good things in life aswell. For example, learning to speed read, creativity, time management, etc. All to overcome the problems that ADD causes.

I don't understand what is the funny part about being colorblind

Its funny because you can't tell the difference between colors. Therefore, leading to some hilarious pranks.

No, still not funny.

Oh yes, Draco. Truly hilarious...

gosh TLS talk about someone that can't sense a joke

Shinkiro, ADD is a seriously problem that affects children everywhere. but anyways... LOL COLOR BLINDNESSS. HAHAHAHA. <= 1 in 30 people are color blind. (did a survey at school).

Color blindness is so common, some games actually have options that change in-game colors to enable color-blind players to "enjoy" the game.

ADD is so common, they have video games.

Yeah CoD has that to change the overhead tags from green and red so you can tell who is an enemy and who is a team member.

Why can't people like you just shut up and leave us alone? The fact that I am (partially) colour blind is not exactly an asset.

I suppose I could flame you and call you names, but that's more like your level, isn't it? Just let me tell you this: it's not a good thing to make fun of people who are different. That also includes people who are handicapped in some way. It only serves to make you come across as an insolent child.

TLS you really shouldn't take things to seriously especially things on the internet dude

I agree with TLS that taking the piss out of disabilities and stuff is a bit harsh but getting annoyed about it only makes it worse. The fact is, its really easy to laugh at people who are different and a lot of the time it is funny (although I don't really see how just stating "HAHA YOU'RE COLOURBLIND" or whatever, is funny tbh). Just calm down. Reacting only makes it worse

I totally agree on this. Can't they be like all games and tag your allies blue? Or at least make it a less subtle tone. I never know when to shoot an RC-XD because of the stupid color tags, same goes to people.

@TLS
I agree w/ you man. But you see, rage only makes it worse. Don't even bother with answering him. I am colorblindd too. Anomalous Trichromacy. It's not easy, but it isn't a weakness at all. Just play it cool and bother with a minor internet troll.

Yeah it would probably be better if CoD just changed the colours permanently but I think most people are used to the green and red now, and they probably are the most logical colours (green is traditionally a positive colour and red is negative). At least it has the option for colour-blindness

Say nothing? Then what? The kid has to know something is wrong about insulting people who are different. It's alright to make a few jokes if you're good friends, but he was just being an asshole. I called him out on that.

And yes, I also made a snide remark and a wish for him to leave us alone, but I'd say I kept it pretty reasonable.

Yeah but Draco, like most idiots in the internet, only says things to get a reaction. Remember the most important rule of every forum site:

PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS

Maybe we should put a sign over the forum page:
PLEASE DO NOT FEED DRACOX872

Where was I when these 9 comments happened? Oh and thanks, 8 of those comments you guys made were delicious. Pretty fail you don't know how to deal with trolls. The internet isn't serious.

I'm sure insulting color blind people isn't the tip of the ice berg when it comes to other insults. The only reason its worse is because a large amount of people are color blind. Why do you guys care so much that I insulted colorblind people and care so little that Shinkiro joked about ADD being a myth? If there were some people on these forums who actually had serious ADD that affects their lives, they would probably argue with Shinkiro.

Troll vs. advice: Do nothing. Its kind of like governments and people. Government trolls you, you do something, you go to federal prison.

http://www.break.com/index/theres-no-point-arguing-with-an-ibex.html

Straight from the horse's mouth there

Very well... Everyone is different, internet is not serious, genetic illnesses suck.
So I guess internet wins?

The internet ALWAYS wins.

The second I read James's comment, I thought "The internet ALWAYS wins". And then I saw Patrick's comment. Bleh.

But remember, the Internet is everyone and noone so its up to you to decide who wins.

Haha. Sorry Draco!

Roses are gray
Violets are gray
I'm color blind
And dyslexic too.

wow

I saw that poem on the internetz, but it didn't rhyme so i decided to add "And dyslexic too"