Actually, the picture can be larger than 84x84 but it will be automatically reduced by the software. In the avatar size boxes you will need to specify the size you want it to display. 84x84 is the default and the max size. The first number is horizontal, the second is vertical. You want to specify a number that is in the same proportion as your picture. For example, if you picture is 800 pixels by 600 pixels, you'd want the avatar size to be 84 x 63. 63 is 600/800 x 84. Otherwise the picture will appear squashed.
T1mrtork, thanks. This quill signature is one someone made for me a long time ago. I think they're available on the web for most names, for free. The one that looked like handwriting actually was my handwriting. I used to have a tablet on my pc and that's one I recorded back in those days. The others, like this one, were made with various graphics packages. MyTypeArtist is a cheapie that's excellent at doing things with type.
I do have a couple of keys on this laptop that have the label mostly rubbed off. The letter keys also are partly shiny where fingers rub them.
Tedd, there are places out there you can put your picture for free. One that comes to mind is
http://www.hostmyimages.net . At this site I think your picture becomes public property. You can link to it but cannot go see it otherwise. That's fine for this kind of use if you don't mind it being public. First you use the browse button on that site to locate the picture on your system, then click the 'host it' button. in a minute it will come back with a whole list of urls. For the avatar you want the one labeled 'your image url'. Just below that is another, BBC something, that already has the img tags attached that are needed to put a picture in the post like this -- i just uploaded this one for this purpose --
Good luck and have fun! You might be careful that your picture is not too big in terms of filesize or those on dialup or cell connections will take forever to load the page. Generally speaking I'd recommend no more than 50k in size. If you need something to reduce the file size, there's a good free one called irfanview at
http://www.irfanview.com . I use this one frequently. Generally, reducing to 65% quality makes it much smaller and still has reasonable quality. Also, you can reduce the overall physical size (like reducing 800x600 to 400x300 or whatever).
--edited-- well, I see I'm getting the red-x on that picture I put at hostmyimages. When I go to their site it says I've exceeded my bandwidth so I hereby withdraw my recommendation for their site. Awhile back they had server problems and lost all the pictures I had put there so I'm not going to wait on a third strike. Two is enough.
Linear Mode
