<font color=blue>Can you convert some of TBN Gif's to be truly emotional</font color=blue>
I certainly
could, John, but let me say this about that:
Without actually saying so, Muhammad appears to have adhered to a self-imposed set of guidelines that make a lot of sense to me. Maybe I'm over-interpreting what I've observed, but the "official" emoticons have been designed to be as innocuous as possible. That is, they physically fit nicely into a line of text (only 15 pixels tall), and they have an extremely small footprint (i.e. your animated eyeballs smileycon weighs nearly
7 times more than it's inanimate counterpart).
Also, the official emoticons are really
very well done. They may look like simple cartoons, but when you examine them closely, they are very high quality renderings. If you compare them to, say, AOL Instant Messenger emoticons, you'll see what I mean. I'd hate to see our amateur efforts pervade the look and feel of TBN.
I have violated these "guidelines" my own self, so I only use them for special occasions, like when the context just
begs for a little visual help. Since Muhammad is dedicated to making this forum as fast and efficient as possible, even for those with slow modems connected by 50 miles of barbed wire, I even feel a little guilty for starting the signature icon fad.
Just to keep rambling on the issue -- I love pictures and visuals, but I rarely use in-line graphics of any size for the same reasons I just mentioned. They actually make for very cool messages, but I suspect the "Attachment" feature is there to keep large files out of the main flow of the messages. Again, this is just Harv's personal take on things.
Muhammad has hinted about posting "official" guidelines when/if it becomes necessary, so since he hasn't done that yet, we can probably assume that there is no perceivable problem at this point.
Wow! I just put a lot of words in your mouth, Muhammad. Hope I didn't speak too far out of line here (but then, I
am paying that $1,000/mo fee /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif).