A way to freely select fonts, font colors and other UI components

asked 2014-03-06 20:57:16 +0200

HighCast gravatar image

updated 2015-04-30 15:32:41 +0200

jiit gravatar image

I have a bit of bad eyes, and therefore my color separating capabilities are lowed down. So my range of visible colors and contrasts are lower than with "normal seeing2 people.

This causes issues for example in situation where I text a SMS message to someone and that person responds to me. The response to my own message is clearly visible, but my own text is like dimmed out, and it's text visibility is really poor.

We should have a way to define our own color schema selections to fonts and to a different sections of texts, so that also for example in SMS messages and in "Mitakuuluu" (whatsapp indie app) my own messages would be easier to read.

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Comments

See https://together.jolla.com/question/16673/howto-ambiences/?answer=17984#post-id-17984 and the comments there. I am also hoping for some sort of solution, maybe a community driven one.

jgr ( 2014-03-06 23:02:22 +0200 )edit

i asked this question ages ago. Texts I send need to be easily readable too. one thing I love about android is the plethora of tweaking options. Hopefully Jolla gets many too.

Hazy ( 2014-03-07 02:00:55 +0200 )edit
1

Fonts: No, because someone somewhere would make Comic Sans their system font and then post a screenshot of this on the internet, thus destroying Jolla's imago and integrity.

Customisation options are pretty much like double-bladed swords. You can make your UI look better and less ambiguous in your own opinion, but UI developers can't be asked to test their interface with all possible fonts and colour combinations. This means that at some point, you will find yourself using an application that is completely unusable with your fonts or colours and that pretty much destroys the point of having wide range of customisation options.

Milo ( 2014-03-07 13:11:35 +0200 )edit

"Fonts: No, because someone somewhere would make Comic Sans ... screenshot ... Jolla's integrity": With this argument you can only build completely locked systems. The same applies to font size, color selection etc. Such things rather limit the integrity of the poster.

The problem has been described well in the question: You have to cater for different needs. The current UI is not best. For example, in a light environment it is even for people with standard sight difficult to read the numbers on the unlock screen due to their minimal contrast difference to the background. This problem goes through the whole Sailfish UI: Important items often have to little contrast to the background. On the other hand, if you increase contrast, you can reduce the size increasing the relative screen estate.

If apps would not specify their own UI parameters but use the theme parameters as specified by the users, there should never be a problem with usability: The user has decided that this suites her/him, so it suits him/her.

Yes, it is a bit more programming, not to hard code the UI but to built it flexible based on the parameters provided by the operating system. But on the other hand, you reduce your testing needs. You have to build a flexible UI anyway, because the user may use your app in portrait or landscape mode.

jgr ( 2014-03-07 13:31:06 +0200 )edit

At the very least there should be font size options and perhaps normal / bold font. This could either be done in each app or under accessibility settings. Pretty much every other phone out there allows font resizing as standard.

Hazy ( 2014-03-07 17:36:22 +0200 )edit