The standard minimum window size is 800x600, but thats for small monitors. Most people view pages in 1200x900 or even better resolution these days.
The left part of a post (where the user details are) is about 190px wide, but this changes if you have a longer avatar - eg Graham, Craig and Matty have 210px wide avatars.
Left margin is 35px. Signature padding ~5px
So, to be safe, I think signatures should be maximum 950px
I'm pretty sure that avatars have a set size requirement (x by y pixels) for exactly that reason, to keep the posts at standard width. Sigs don't have a set dimension....maybe there should be a definition of the maximum appropriate sig picture width?
It doesn't need to be a strict setting, just set a guideline number in the forum rules. That way when we see a sig that is too wide, we can report it based on a forum rule rather than looking like a stickler. One mailday thread this morning had both oversized mail pics (again....) and oversized sigs.
yup we will bang our heads together and come up with some figures I guess as common sense doesn't seem to take place a lot of the time or people are just lazy.
Many people still access this site via laptops that use 1024x768.. and most of the windows xp installed with 1024x768 for default settings for most of the graphic accelerator cards.. so, i am thinking 700 pixels is best fit?? like your sig or BennyJ's photo...
Your sig doesn't determine the width of the post, so all is good. It's when the sig or uploaded picture causes the post to be wider than the default setting that the forums become untidy and tedious.