As usual, when code is released into the wild the bugs begin to frolic. I’m tidying up loose ends in the avatar system, and I’ve also added a feature that will come in handy if you’d rather not wait for all those little pictures to load on the longer threads—you can now turn off all the personal icons in your User Account page.

Comment threads load much faster if you turn them off. But they’re a lot cooler with the icons. The decision is yours.

UPDATE at 12/6/07 5:33:49 pm:

The user profile window that appears when you click an avatar (or the default tiny green football) now shows the picture you uploaded. Note that the version that appears in your profile page is the full-size, unscaled version—the original image file at its original size.

Also, to save wear and tear on our poor beleagured Apache web server, you’ll have to be registered and logged in to see the comment avatars. Unregistered visitors will see the tiny green football on all comments.