New Rule about jsMath

[gmalivuk]

While jsMath is amazingly helpful for displaying complex formulas, it does significantly slow down page loading for a lot of people.

Therefore, please refrain from using it for things which are perfectly easy to display using plain text and other bbcode tags.

If you just want to raise something to an exponent, use ^[sup].
If you just want a subscript, use _[sub].
If you just want to make clear what letters are variables as opposed to commentary text, make them italic or bold instead of [math]y.
These characters and strings are perfectly usable in ASCII: { } | -> <- ... ! < > != and so on.

[nehpest]

Is there any chance we could get a similar rule about jsMath in sigs?

[skeptical scientist]

Is there any chance we could get a similar rule about jsMath in sigs?

That sounds like a good idea.

On a related note, is there any way to keep jsMath from hijacking my computer every time it needs to parse a formula? One would think it would be capable of running quietly while I load new tabs in the background without making it impossible to even scroll the page I'm currently trying to read.

[mr-mitch]

By opening the options (jsMath creates a button on your window somewhere) you can force asynchronous processing. Whether or not that solves the problem, I'm not sure.

[skeptical scientist]

I found a way to solve the problem: use subsilver.

[ars111]

Is there any chance we could get a similar rule about jsMath in sigs?

I would also like to know this? I try to use math functions in signature but unsuccessfully.

[gmalivuk]

The desired rule is to never use math fonts in signatures, so it's good you were unsuccessful.

[Yakk]

Enforcement successful.

[mfb]

Did you consider MathJax? It is quick enough to handle 10-50 formulas per page without notable delays (assuming a reasonable length, don't write 10+ pages in LaTeX).

[Xanthir]

Not only does it render much faster, it renders prettier, in my opinion.

(MathJax, despite the misleading name, doesn't really do any AJAX. It uses HTML and CSS trickses to produce pretty, well-formatted formulas with a minimum of images. Because it's using real text, it looks better on high-dpi screens, too.)