Why color should be disabled ... - Page 2

[Dani]

Based on the wysiwyg bug thread, looks like iamthwee is another one in favor of color-free posts. :)

[Dani]

I've slept on it and, upon rereading all the posts of this thread, I've come to my decision. Here is what will happen:

- You will now only be able to choose between red and green colors. (If there is a strong demand for it, a third color may be added). Color should only be used to add value to a post, and an entire post that's in color "just for the sake of it" will have its color stripped by mods.

- The use of a tag that specifies a color other than red or green will automatically default to red.

- Non-syntax highlighted code tags will now be in black so that the green color can be applied to specific lines and still stand out. This way you aren't any more limited in color options when using code tags.

- The post cache I've written, which stores bbcode-parsed versions of posts, will remain intact. This means that all posts up to this point which have been viewed within the past X months will remain in their full color, for as long as they continue to be viewed. Posts which escape the threshold (and haven't been viewed in so long they get deleted from the cache) will then default to all text portions that use the code tag appearing in red.

I think this is a very fair compromise for everyone. Those of us who find color very distracting will only have to contend with two colors aside from the regular post color, both of which will be moderated to ensure are used only when needed. Those of you who want to be able to use color will still have the option of multiple colors to choose from for your posts. And, as a bonus, code tags are now in basic black.

[Dani]

Additionally, highlight bbcode will automatically be switched to be bold red, just as it was intended. It will no longer mimic the look of searched-for keywords, which will remain black with a yellow background, a look which can't be reproduced with bbcode.

[iamthwee]

Good work, I think the addition of red and green is a good compromise and will be enough to point out the bad parts in ppl's code, which is necessary.

I'm actually surprised how much I've grown fond of the code being coloured in green, but it is a small point to worry about.

As you said:-

This means that all posts up to this point which have been viewed within the past X months will remain in their full color

That was also a good idea for all those that didn't use either red or green to point out problems in ppl's code. At least their original intentions will be kept intact?

I guess we will have to see what others think...

[Ancient Dragon]

Too bad you don't filter out the color tags that sometimes appear in C/C++ posted code -- I mean the color tags that appear to be embedded by some automated text editor, like [ color=0x001234 ]. These are pretty combursome to manually remove.

[iamthwee]

LOL, Ancient dragon you do realise if you highlight the whole code then press the A button with a cross on it( in the top left hand corner of the editor) it gets rid of that for you?

[Dani]

> I'm actually surprised how much I've grown fond of the code being coloured in green
I was also very fond of the green code but it wouldn't have made sense to allow people to highlight between red and green and also have text in green by default. However, it will be missed.

[~s.o.s~]

LOL, Ancient dragon you do realise if you highlight the whole code then press the A button with a cross on it( in the top left hand corner of the editor) it gets rid of that for you?

No it doesn't. If manual coloring is used, the hex codes stay no matter what you do, thats because language syntax highlighters weren't supposed to contain color tags.

[Dani]

No ... paste all the code from the IDE. Then select everything, and hit the little crossed out 'A' icon. THEN wrap the now color-free code with tags.[code=syntax] tags.

[~s.o.s~]

I ain't talking about pasting the code from an IDE but the manual coloring done by beginner posters to add syntax highlighting.

[Infarction]

- You will now only be able to choose between red and green colors. (If there is a strong demand for it, a third color may be added). Color should only be used to add value to a post, and an entire post that's in color "just for the sake of it" will have its color stripped by mods.

Assuming the two colors are meant to emphasize "good" vs "bad", it seems like red and green are the worst you could pick from a usability perspective, if you were to consider color blindness to be a possible issue. The colored text would still be distinguished, but only from the regular black text.

[iamthwee]

I ain't talking about pasting the code from an IDE but the manual coloring done by beginner posters to add syntax highlighting.

Interesting, do you have a link to an offending thread...

I think the problem might be the space between the square bracket and the first word. Perhaps that is why it doesn't work.

[ color=0x001234 ]. The A button doesn't work

The A button works.

[Dani]

Without code in green anymore, it blended in too much with regular text, so I added a background around it.

[Infarction]

Without code in green anymore, it blended in too much with regular text, so I added a background around it.

Might you consider putting something in for inline code as well?

[jbennet]

i think coloured text is bad but i think code tags should still be coloured

i agree dani as i like to do code-explaination-code-explainatuon etc.. and now i get confused e.g

int y
x = 1
y = 2
z = 0
 
z = x+y
 
print z

this code prints z - alternatively

msgbox(" &x&")

but this is bad...

etc.....

[jbennet]

that isnt real code its just random things that make no sense, in order to illustaate my point

[Infarction]

jbennets post reminded me of something else: would it be possible to remove the blank lines or padding or whatever at the top and bottom of code blocks? Especially if they have different backgrounds, it just seems like a waste of space.

[jbennet]

lol iamthwee, im not dsyslexic (i like reading) - but i an reallly really crappy at both writing and typnig (is that a condition?)

illustaate

explainatuon

[iamthwee]

LOL, well have you ever been tested for dyslexia?

[jbennet]

nope dont thinkso

[iamthwee]

Well there ya go =)

[jbennet]

maybe that expalins why i now regret doing english at colledge

[Dani]

iamthwee added like 5 hard line breaks. The padding isn't really that much.

[Dani]

Here is an example of what code now looks like:

int main()
{
     cout << "Hello World!";
     return 0;
}

int main()
{
     cout << "Hello World!";
     return 0;
}

I chose the pale yellow color for two reasons. The first is that it's a color that is already used in other elements on the site (such as the tooltips). The second is that it is reminiscent of the background color I used to use for xterm back in the days when I actually did use linux. You'll notice that code font is now one size larger, and it is solid black as opposed to regular text which is a dark grey.

[~s.o.s~]

I appreciate the increase in font size, its just that the background color is too loud. Something sober would be more like it. (like the gray background).

[Dani]

Highlighted code now says what syntax language it's highlighted in.

s.o.s.: I believe that it's simply your own monitor. The box appears as a nice pale yellow on my Windows machine, and yet it just barely noticable on my mac. Both computers use Apple cinema displays. No matter what color I chose, it's going to appear differently on everyone's computer, so I opted to choose a color scheme that is one of the default schemes that comes with xterm, since odds are they put effort into choosing a combination that the majority find easily-readable.

Initially I played with shades of grey but, especially for very large snippets, it was just an overwhelming amount of grey, which (to me) looked "gloomy". It also was very hard to differentiate from the user information boxes above each post and from quote tags.

[Ancient Dragon]

I really like the new colors, for me it makes it a lot easier to read the code. Now, if you could only somehow force the newbes use the code tags;)

[Infarction]

It shows up as a light pink on my laptop but I can't even see it on my desktop. Oh well, I'm usually on the laptop anyways. And I like it a lot :)

[Dani]

> I appreciate the increase in font size
I was having a problem with the increase in font size. It was working fine with IE, but in FireFox, it was altering the line height every time you toggled between line numbers. For now the font size is once again back to 11px from 12px. Sorry about that.

[jbennet]

i like the pale yellow colour. It looks lovely on my CRT screen but looks a bit flourescent on my notebook (i think thats what happened to sos). turned the contrast down and its fine now