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Should avatars on MacRumors be circular or square?

  • Circular

    Votes: 73 46.5%
  • Square

    Votes: 84 53.5%

  • Total voters
    157
Hmm, you raise an interesting point; perhaps this tweak still allows for too much individualism. I mean, that's me to a tee. :oops:
You're right, still way too much individualism. Next migration I'm hoping for no avatars at all, and user account numbers in place of of usernames. ;)
 
With 116 votes cast and the frequency with which they're cast decreasing, it's time to reach some sort of decision. Right now, 46.6% of voters want circular avatars while 53.4% want squares, so I've compromised and set my boarder radius to 46.6%:

Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at 12.11.46 PM.png
Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at 12.12.17 PM.png
Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at 12.12.45 PM.png


It just goes to show, there are far worse avatar options than circles.
 
With 116 votes cast and the frequency with which they're cast decreasing, it's time to reach some sort of decision. Right now, 46.6% of voters want circular avatars while 53.4% want squares, so I've compromised and set my boarder radius to 46.6%:

View attachment 563319 View attachment 563320 View attachment 563321

It just goes to show, there are far worse avatar options than circles.
Squircles. A nice compromise.

Actually, rounded squares don't look all that bad. Consistent like circles, but slightly less restrictive. Border-radius of 25%:
Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at 10.36.32 AM.png

I still prefer squares though.
 
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Your current spinning wait cursor rainbow avatar is too circular, comrade. A spinning square might be easier on the eye. Joking aside …

An open mind

… (A bunch of images...)



Sweet dreams xx although I must say, some of what's above is nightmarish. That thing with the palm tree, FFS …


I really liked your post, with all those images... But I'm still voting square! :D
 
But to have the circle you need the same diameter as the height and width the square would be anyway. With a square that had the same height and width, you could have the exact same avatar as a circle. But you can't fit the square in the circle without making it smaller. Seems the wrong way round to me. Your random mix of squares and circles will now be a random mix of inconsistently smaller squares and large circles, surely the worst of all possible combinations if you're hoping for a consistent look.

168erdg.jpg


Personally I would have always supported your choice to have a circular avatar if you wanted to (I think your avatar looks great btw) - it's a shame you, and others, can't support others' choice to have a similarly-proportioned square if that's what they want.

What else is an avatar if not an expression of identity for the user? Confining it in this way limits that expression for some users in a rather arbitrary manner. There may as well be a rule that you are only allowed avatars in a certain colour, or that can only be abstract geometric shapes rather than representational images. I find it to be a backward step.
I will join you, if only for a brief time, with a square inside a circle.
Square inside circle.png

:)

My avatar looks quite nice in this cropping, and I wish MacRumors would allow it to be displayed as such on threads without requiring me to decrease the size so drastically. It is now effectively 75x75, the same small size we had in the vB days.

It's really ridiculous the amount of usable space removed by the circular croppings, and all for the sake of consistency & aesthetics (regardless if the particular avatar actually looks better).
 
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I wish MacRumors would allow it to be displayed as such on threads without requiring me to decrease the size so drastically
But many people like the round avatar and if they go and change it back, we'd be in the same situation as before.

I think at this point the round tar is a nice addition and one that is here to change. If you want to shrink the size to fit a square image inside the circular avatar format, that's your decision.
 
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But many people like the round avatar and if they go and change it back, we'd be in the same situation as before.

I think at this point the round tar is a nice addition and one that is here to change. If you want to shrink the size to fit a square image inside the circular avatar format, that's your decision.
It's interesting that you see restriction and wasted space as a "nice addition". I would welcome your circle inside a square, possible without decreasing the size and if any user so chooses, were MR to switch back to normal square avatars.
 
It's interesting that you see restriction and wasted space as a "nice addition". I would welcome your circle inside a square, possible without decreasing the size and if any user so chooses, were MR to switch back to normal square avatars.
I don't see it as a restriction but a design feature. I'm serious, and I'm not dismissing others who feel otherwise, but rather the site owner opted for a specific look and feel. Now that it had time to sink in, I find the circle avatars to be a nice addition to the overall look and feel.

Does that please everyone, no of course not. Is it an overwhelmingly negative change where a huge majority absolutely despise it? Not by the poll results.

As a member you have the opportunity to choose what avatar to have, whether it fits nicely into the 200px circle or if you choose a smaller avatar that appears square.

Finally it wasn't too long ago where members only had the ability to have 75px avatars, so its not like you're really going backwards.

Edit:
Let me just add that I think there is a vocal minority and again I'm not belittling your opinion (or others). I believe most new and fairly new members are very happy they don't have to wait for a certain post count to get the avatar and also have larger avatars then when we used to have. I guess what I'm saying is when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. :)
 
I agree that it's great everyone can have an avatar now without having to reach a certain post count, it's just a shame the square is now a considered second-class shape. It's shapeism. :p:D
 
While I still think my avatar would look better in a square, I have decided to adapt it to the circles. I'm not willing to suffer with a 75x75 square while nearly everyone else has 96x96 circles (plus it looks bad on Retina and in certain situations where the 'transparency' background doesn't look so transparent).

200px circle
192px, actually. That is the one which is shown as square on user cards and profiles.
 
I agree that it's great everyone can have an avatar now without having to reach a certain post count, it's just a shame the square is now a considered second-class shape. It's shapeism. :p:D

Well, we made it four pages before a geometry justice warrior posted. I'm surprised you didn't have anything to say about @redheeler using the term 'squircle'.
 
Well, we made it four pages before a geometry justice warrior posted. I'm surprised you didn't have anything to say about @redheeler using the term 'squircle'.

Why would I mind?! Squircles are great, of course. A wonderful display of the harmony and diversity that an open and dimensionally liberated avatar space allows for. :)

Having said that, and all joking aside, I do genuinely hope this isn't made into one of those threads where it is noted that due to a perceived political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is relocated to MacRumors' Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. You know, where all forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
 
Why would I mind?! Squircles are great, of course. A wonderful display of the harmony and diversity that an open and dimensionally liberated avatar space allows for. :)

It was my understanding that 'squircle' is used as a pejorative and that the preferred term is 'rounded rectangle'. But what do I know? I'm not into that PC stuff. :p
 
It was my understanding that 'squircle' is used as a pejorative and that the preferred term is 'rounded rectangle'. But what do I know? I'm not into that PC stuff. :p

I apologise – you could well be right. After all, I am as much in favour for the avatar space to allow for rounded oblongs as for any other shape - to say otherwise would undermine my own argument.

I look to the dock at the bottom of my desktop and it is a happy place, filled with circles, squares, triangles, stylised letters etc, and I think 'that's what life should be about'. Not the oppressive forces of pi, conspiring against free expression in equal dimensions to dominate all other shapes. :eek::p
 
Is the visible circular border unavoidable?

I don't know. I am noticing its prominence is inconsistent; it seems to be dependent on surrounding DOM elements:

inconsitent.gif


Sometimes, it's not present at all:

Screen Shot 2015-06-28 at 3.19.33 PM.png
 
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Is the visible circular border unavoidable?
For right now, yes. This graphic should simply explain the reason it's there.
Circular Border Explination.png

It's not really a border at all, rather the gray background showing through the partly transparent pixels around the circle. The solution would be to allow true transparency for avatars instead of using the gray background.
 
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For right now, yes. This graphic should simply explain the reason it's there.
View attachment 564814
It's not really a border at all, rather the gray background showing through the partly transparent pixels around the circle. The solution would be to allow true transparency for avatars instead of using the gray background.
That's fantastic. How'd you figure it out?

Is the visible circular border unavoidable?
Appending the following code to a user stylesheet should serve as a workaround:
Code:
.avatar img[src*="data"]{
    background-color: transparent !important;
}
This leaves the gray background on the default icon of users without customized avatars.
 
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That's fantastic. How'd you figure it out?
Shortly after the migration when some aspects of the theme were being tweaked, the gray avatar background was temporarily removed, and that resulted in my posts here and here.
background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0) !important;
background-color: transparent !important; is a little more elegant and also works just fine.
However, that removes the gray background from the default icon of users without customized avatars.
Won't be a problem here.
generic-avatars-png.564629

Looks much nicer than the ugly ones MR currently uses.
 
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… its prominence is inconsistent …

Around the time of me asking (Friday evening, UK), the line was very noticeable – more than in @AngerDanger's example – for at least one person whose avatar was shrunken so that the user-preferred square appeared properly shaped within the MacRumors-preferred circle.

In weight and colour, the line of the circle was comparable to the dashed line that's drawn above by redheeler. What I saw were solid lines, and I thought that I saw those circular lines around the shrunken square avatar of more than one person. But it's possible that just one person intentionally drew the circular line around their square within a square. Unfortunately I didn't shoot the screen; I assumed that everyone could see the oddity.

The circular line was not visible around a square avatar when I reviewed this topic at 18:07 yesterday, with @Porco as an example:

2015-06-28 18-07-18 screenshot.png2015-06-28 18-07-40 screenshot.png

An optimistic guess: maybe the circular lines were transient whilst site administrators experimented with a combination of auto-detection plus shrinking of square avatars.
 
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