How does the User Card popup work?

When anyone is viewing your user card below a question or answer, or on the Users page, they may hover over your profile image to produce an expanded user card that contains extra information. This is also known as a hover card.

Comparison of normal user card and expanded user card

An expanded user card is only shown (to anyone hovering over your profile image) if there are at least 6 characters in the "About me" section of your profile.

What information is shown in the expanded user card?

Your expanded user card will show the following information:

  • Your profile image, in a slightly larger resolution
  • Your display name (linked to your profile)
  • Your reputation and badges
  • Your Location, if you have entered one in your profile
  • A link to your Website, if you have entered one in your profile
  • The "About me" section of your profile. Up to the first 298 characters will be displayed in your expanded user card. HTML links and line/paragraph breaks will be rendered, but formatting such as bold will not.
  • Any additional HTML links in your "About me" will be displayed and linked at the bottom of the expanded user card. This does not repeat any links that are already shown in the previous part.

You can edit your profile here.

What if I don't want the text of my "About me" section to appear in my expanded user card?

If you don't want the exact text of your "About me" section to appear in your user card (e.g. if it's too long and gets cut off, or because the formatting is weird), then you can include a summary comment at the top of your "About me" section, using the following syntax:

<!-- summary: [your text here] -->

Replace [your text here] with your desired summary (of at least 6 characters), and save your changes; that text will then appear in your expanded user card in place of your "About me" section. Note that because it is an HTML comment, it can not include any other HTML, such as for links.

(The spaces before and after summary: and before the closing --> are required, if you use this method.)

What if I don't want an expanded user card to appear at all for my profile?

If you don't want an expanded user card to appear when someone hovers over your profile image, you can use a summary comment with an insufficiently long passage (5 or fewer characters) to render your profile as "too short" to display. For example, the following will be considered too short:

<!-- summary: &nbsp; -->

This will prevent an expanded usercard from appearing to anyone who hovers over your profile image. (However, you'll still see expanded user cards when hovering over others' profile images.)