Flashing, Jumping, Frantic Avatars and Smilies

[Karen]

Flashing, Jumping, Frantic Avatars and Smilies --
Do other people find that these animated images are distracting and make the messages difficult to read? Or is it just me? The more frantic ones actually have caused my heart to start to race. I have devised items to stand up against my monitor to block these from my field of vision, and of course I must constantly be moving them. I think it would be nice if more people were aware of this distraction and the energy of their visual aids and that more would choose to treat the other members with nice calm static items. LOL or maybe that is just the "control freak" segment of me doing the typing. Anyway, I already looked it up on the web and know many others find the moving images difficult to deal with. :original: And to those that choose to help out with this -a zillion THANK YOUS!!!

[eris]

God Yes! i had real problems at first before people started getting new avatars from outside the choice of insanely flash ones offered - a real nightmare for the super-sensitives :) lol - hello &:welcomeani: i'm eris

[OMDoodlebug]

Hit the esc button on your keyboard to freeze gif animations.

[Myplanet2]

I just tune them out.

They can however help in avoiding misunderstandings. Communicating over the net like this removes the body language aspect of normal interpersonal communication. I've seen the little Gif's remove some ambiguity where you'd quite often see irony mistaken as a comment meant to be taken seriously.

Ironic comment plus "tongue in cheek" smiley = chuckle, instead of humourless rebuttal.

I didn't know they bother some people.

And they can be REALLY overused.

[Karen]

Hit the esc button on your keyboard to freeze gif animations.

OMDoodlebug! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Way back when Netscape had a feature where you could freeze all the animations, I used that. I've searched all over newer browsers (using Firefox now) and not found anything.

YEAH! What a great name for that button.
Escape!
Escape!
Escape!
All before my eyes is calm and peaceful now.