Notices

There is a simple argument against using green, yellow, or red for any normal selection elements in any of the themes: These three colors are generally treated by humans as having a certain meaning, with green meaning "go" or "ok", yellow meaning "wait" or "warning", and red meaning "stop" or "failure". For example, all air traffic control software is required to use these three colors only in the above situations.

So, when somebody sees a small UI element in one of these three colors, the first reaction is that the system is trying to tell something. In order to avoid this effect, just use any other color (blue, white, brown, even magenta).

Yes, this is VERY important for photos. Default sort mode for photos should be filename, date(s) sorting optional.
Anyway I really like the current Canola photo album interface, zoom works nice and the semi-transparent controlbars in the full view mode are excellent! Would like to get similar controls on other apps (besides of Canola) as well.

For example: wide semi-transparent scrollbars which appear when touching (and holding/scrolling) the right edge of screen would be nice on MicroB.

Has anyone else been having trouble displaying Flickr photocasts since upgrading? Viewing Flickr albums just shows the spinning wheel for me (Picasa feeds seems fine). I tried re-adding the feeds into the Photocasts 'Add URL:', but all I get is 'No feed available for this URL'.

@Thustle : this is odd :/ we will try to investigate, because flickr apperently did not change it's feeds : / can you try in the browser? with canola tuniing installed?

@fms : this is arguable I agree that we can have some colors meaning something but I don't think the selection is small element and when you touch it it "brighten" up one very defined and understandable area. If this was for indicators of something then I totally agree with you (so much that we use that on the cancel button, and we are thinking of add also to the delete button in the grey part, that we wanted to keep neutral)
But don't worry there will be lots of variations of each themes quite soon

@myrjola : yeah, this was one of the only complaints about the photo view. We want to allow some changes for the users, but just give us sometime I already can fully agree that this is need (by the amount of requests) and once we finish the bugs on photo and thumbnails this options can come in

Br, BossaConference starting!!!



Thanks,

Marcelo

Thanks for the suggestion. I installed Canola tuning and it managed to put the feed into Canola OK, but still nothing appears (other than the spinning icon). I tried another random Flickr album and the same thing happens. This definitely worked prior to Beta6. Is there anything else I can try?
Thanks.

The effect will occur with any outstanding UI element, not just an indicator, because your eyes continue treating objects of these colors as indicators. In other words, a yellow background is unlikely to trigger a response but a yellow selection bar on a neutral background will.

Well, as you could see from the comment just after yours, this can be said as personal.
I'm the lead interaction designer in the project, and we actualy do make some users tests in all components, nobody on the tests ever talked about it. If this was really at least near a issue, one of the more than 24 people tested would have said something. (really different personas used as template for the tester finding process)

But again, we can talk as much as you want on the subject, because I'm really glad to hear a comment outside of the " common " problem and more into my area of joy/work

I think you also have my email, if you want to directly contact me at any time
*if you like I can also send you the design sheet of the grey theme, so you can customize it for you

BR

MArcelo

As weird as it sounds, the fact that you haven't seen it reported may not mean a thing. I have had some really serious bugs (not something as minor as a slightly uncomfortable UI color) reported months after the software release.

It's all right, don't bother: the yellow selection color is just a minor annoyance. It may be the reason why nobody reported it so far.

Better fix the playback problem though: I have verified yesterday that Canola will sometimes start playing a wrong song for a few seconds, then straighten up and go to the next song in the album I am listening to. It is currently set to shuffle and loop. Will report more details if/when I figure them out.

Well fms, as I'm talking to you we can go offline and go really academic if you want I have experts on that subject on the team, also phycologist and more and it's not about the bugs, but I really on my use testing. BUT I do understand what you say because I am the most disruptive with rules of them all but I really believe this doesn't apply to this case there's cases and cases, and the "learning factor" is also important, because even i f the doubt comes up, he soons realize that there was no mistake and this becomes a non-issue

Also, we could do a black theme with RED details every where (like somebodies favorite football team) that it wouldn't mean error / problem to the user who wanted to install it. I can assure you that. People have different perceptions and of course even with some " standarts" (yellow attention) they do adapt to changes when needed if the context shows no or small possibility of problem.

About the song problem: yes, this is the kind of problem. We know how to fix it, but we will need to write OUR media engine. It just a pain to rely on a third party application communication to it via dbus to have things working. A pain, believe me. If we had one person available I would place him doing the player right now. To make sure we can control this issues ( I have some really boring bugs bogging me : the play pause changing when changing songs, the track button appearing in the beginning and locking podcst playback, the time it takes to start up the media engine and much more )

Believe me I really "picky" to the errors also, and the dev guys get really pissed when I manage to find and ask like crazy to get them fixed.

just to confirm that i have tried my flickr photo feed and have same problem. i also tried re-adding the feed via the browser and canola stopped me saying feed was already included? (worked fine pre beta 6)