Disable avatars on HFBoards

[Osprey]

Edit: It's been pointed out that the ability to hide avatars in posts was added a couple of days ago. Oh well. You can still use the following instructions to hide them from forum view, though.

Edit #2: ...and the below no longer works for forum view. I'm really starting to dislike coming to this site.

This new board software sorely needs an ability to disable avatars, something which the old (and better, IMO) board software had for 15 years. In the meantime, since avatars were irritating me, I looked into force-disabling them. Since I accomplished it, I thought that I'd share.

Here's how:

Go into your adblocker's options, then to the custom filters (ex. "Add your own filters") section and add the following:

http://cdn1-www.hfboards.mandatory.com/data/avatars/*
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_s.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_l.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_m.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_male_s.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_female_s.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_male_m.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_female_m.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_male_l.png
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/styles/brivium/stylium/germanium/xenforo/avatars/avatar_female_l.png

The top one disables users' custom avatars and all of the rest disable the various default ones that come with the board software (for people who haven't set a custom avatar, like me). There might be a way for you to edit your filters in raw text so that you can just copy and paste all of those at once.

Having avatars disabled seems to greatly speed up loading of pages for me and also streamlines them so that posts and threads take up a bit less vertical room.

Click to read more...

 

[The Crypto Guy]

I like the avatars.

 

[SniperHF]

Funny story, we just added something along these lines a couple days ago.
go here: http://hfboards.mandatory.com/account/personal-details

Look for "hide avatars" and check the box.

It doesn't hide them on the forum index but it does in-thread.

 

[Osprey]

Funny story, we just added something along these lines a couple days ago.
go here: http://hfboards.mandatory.com/account/personal-details

Look for "hide avatars" and check the box.

It doesn't hide them on the forum index but it does in-thread.

I don't see a "hide avatars" checkbox on that page. That's not a feature only for mods or sponsors, is it? If it's the latter, then you may want to delete this thread.

Edit: Oh, there it is. I'm blind. Welp. It wasn't there a few days ago. I guess that I should've re-checked before starting this thread. Thanks for the tip, Sniper.

 

[SniperHF]

We should probably have a rolling feature update/change thread somewhere TBH.

That option is buried on a weird page and wasn't announced AFAIK.

 

[Individual 1]

It doesn't hide them on the forum index but it does in-thread.

Will this happen in the future? It makes the forum index harder to read and the photos are not relevant to the thread at all.

Also when hovering over a thread a pop up menu appears making it so that thread can't be clicked on, when I move my mouse down to make it disappear and move it back up to open that thread if I am not fast enough that menu just appears basically instantly which is frustrating.

 

[SniperHF]

Will this happen in the future?

Dunno, the web people know some people want it though.

Can always let them know on the support forum about it or other various features you might want

 

[Osprey]

Wow, four of you voted "Avatars are awesome. You're stupid!" You guys are mean. I have feelings, you know .

 

[Ceremony]

96 pixels square is too much for you? Was your computer made this century?

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Makes it easy to keep track of who is saying what.

I wouldn't say they are awesome but they are useful.

 

[Osprey]

96 pixels square is too much for you? Was your computer made this century?

As with websites in general, it's not simply the amount of data, but the speed of the servers supplying it. This site definitely loads more slowly than it did before.

 

[John Price]

What's wrong with avatars?

 

[John Price]

As with websites in general, it's not simply the amount of data, but the speed of the servers supplying it. This site definitely loads more slowly than it did before.

Is that avatar fault though.

 

[chicagoskycam]

Is that avatar fault though.

More stuff to load, the longer...

 

[Belamorte]

I do not know if it is the avatars fault or not, but there is no doubt this site is way slower than it used to be.

 

[Osprey]

I do not know if it is the avatars fault or not, but there is no doubt this site is way slower than it used to be.

It's not just the avatars. Multiple times (including just a few minutes ago), I've been on the site and it's gotten laggier and laggier to the point where it takes nearly a minute to make any change to the post that I'm typing up. During those times, I've opened both Windows' task manager and Chrome's and found that the single HFBoards tab that I'm working in is consuming a whopping 3GB of memory and 30% CPU usage, even though nothing is happening except the over-the-top, animated ads. This site has turned into an incredible resource hog with an obscene memory leak problem.

 

[Wild11MN]

Agreed, there are some major issues right now. I think the ads are a huge part of that.

 

[John Price]

More stuff to load, the longer...

Well there were Avatars on the vBulletin site too. Why are we putting them to blame.

 

[SniperHF]

For some of the performance complaints, I think this will once implemented reduce a lot of those issues:
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/ad-code-is-being-updated.2399981/

 

[Osprey]

That sounds great. Anything to make it more like the old site, the better, IMO. Thanks for the update.

 

[John Price]

are the Rumors true that you will be able to load faster without javascript

 

[Osprey]

are the Rumors true that you will be able to load faster without javascript

Yes, they are. I just disabled JavaScript and the site is as super snappy as the old one now (the old one with JavaScript disabled on that, too; I just forgot that I had that set, so I didn't think to update it after the site migration). There are a few drawbacks that I've noticed, though. The toolbar above where you compose your message is missing. That's not a big deal for me, since I'm used to just writing out the tags, but it may be for others. Another is that you can't see tweets or play embedded YouTube videos, but the error for the latter comes with a clickable link to watch it on YouTube. For Chrome, go to Settings->Advanced->Privacy and security->Content settings->JavaScript and add "hfboards.mandatory.com" to the Block list.