Suggestions

[M.E.R.255]

Forum smiley-related suggestion:
I have a suggestion that's kind of um, minor? Like pretty minor? But it kind of bugged me, so I was wanting to bring it up. ^^;
A very nice user in here suggested this topic to me for bringing up my thoughts. =) 
(nice going there Merry, using "bringing up" twice just because you can't think of another word for it >_>)

I've noticed the smilies you're using in the forum currently, and I was wondering about a few things... like for one, whether these ->   where made by this site or came standard with this MyBB forum, and whether or not these could be enhanced. Seeing a Super Mario block and such, they seem to be made by someone. ^^ I find the smilies quite cute, don't get me wrong, but the shading on them seems bit faulty, with brighter spots being in the shading where it needs to be dark.

Like here is the original, and to the right is a tiny edit I made which isn't perfect:   
(smilies are "vertical-align: middle;" while IMG tag isn't, that's why my image isn't at the same level. I didn't add any transparent pixels around it)

The shading seems smoother in my opinion. ^^
It seems the smilies are using a different color to simulate shading, like the tongue being bit yellow and the shading orange, whether using less color intensity. The lighting doesn't seem to actually change in this example, just the color itself, but give the illusion it does, so it may be a neat design choice. ^^
Though impressively enough, it only uses 7-8 colors. =O Also it has about 1,005 bytes with its indexed color mode and is a PNG file, which, if it weren't in Indexed color mode, could be 2.8KB big, so that was clever there (taught me something new). ^^
 
But, if the smiley were saved as GIF, the file size could reduce to being 145 bytes like the example I showed you. =)
If the current smilies (around 30) were converted to Gif, they could be reduced by around 85% of bytes, turning around 30,000 bytes to maybe 4,500.
However, 30KB are hardly anything nowadays, unlike where I had to use a modem that went 48Kb/s. XDDD Now such a small amount can be viewed in a fraction of a second, so there is no big demand for file size reduction, unless you were to have hundreds of smilies and thousands of users viewing them all at once, which then could slowdown the server a tiny bit maybe. ^^

Hmm, perhaps the reason why the shading is colors resembling shading (not being darker) is because the smiley is optimized for more browsers and maybe GIFs aren't supported on every platform? Like with web-safe colors that are supported in every browser and such? Though I thought the colors can only be Hexadecimal colors with 33, 66, 99, CC, or FF to be considered web-safe color, and not #fff794 in this case, so may be I'm overthinking this. ^^;

I don't know, just am having a suggestion to perhaps save the smilies in this forum as GIFs and maybe fix up the shading a tiny bit so it looks smoother. =) Maybe also use darker/less colorful pixels for the shading (unless it's the desired style). ^^ 
I'd be willing to help out if you wanted me to (voluntary for this part, I don't want to be in charge of more stuff XDDD), I mean, I love working/making smilies, just let me know!  
(also need to work on mine too maybe, received a comment that mine's shading/contrast is too dark ^^)


Anyways, it's like said not a huge suggestion, or anything vital to the site, but it was just a thought on my part... tried to help out somehow. ^^
Oh, and on a side note... the smilies and icons aren't 100% fitting in a way... like,  and  are quite different, I think. ^^ Bit like having an unaltered Super Mario World sprite in a Metroid game, you know? ^^ (which I'd find interesting to see =P) So maybe either the icons could resemble the smilies, or backwards, just a thought. ^^

Thanks for reading! =D Hope it's not a dumb suggestion. ^^;
Also, sorry for the long reply. ^^;