Colors, contrast, font appearance etc.

[Tester]

Hello Petko (and all visitors to this forum),

I just started my first test with the official version of MyInfo 7.0.9 (6695).

Unfortunately the first visual impression (and this is an essential one) is not good:

All (user interface, the font within the editor etc.) is too bright, with missing of contrast and missing of colors. The letters are too thin, and instead of black color they have a pale grey now that makes it difficult to read them.

I will try to show it simply with two pictures of the same note and a part of the interface of MyInfo. Unfortunately the screenshots do not show the difference so clearly as it is in reality on the screen. But I hope you will get a certain impression:

- one picture with the old version (MyInfo 6):
https://imgur.com/a/pVOKC6r

- the other with the new one (MyInfo 7):
https://imgur.com/a/x4kpsUi

I do not complain about something that is simply a matter of taste. It is extremly exhausting for the eyes to look at a screen with all these negative attributes I mentioned above.

And it's the same here at the forum: suddenly all is so bright, without any contrast, grey in grey.

I am aware that during the last years this happens everywhere (o.k., fortunately not everywhere but very often) in the web and on the interface of software.

And I would really be interested in getting a straightforward answer to the question why this happens. Are there any technical necessities to do so (something I cannot really imagine) or do you (= all the developers of software, webmasters etc.) simply follow a fashion in order to be "modern" or "stylish" or whatever?

I have used MyInfo so many years and I have invested so much time to build my database. Now I expected with interest version 7. But if all these flaws I have mentioned cannot be eliminated (e.g. by offering an alternative skin or whatever else could be done in this respect) I will not be able to switch to version 7 - simply because it's too unpleasant and exhausting for the eyes. I will have to stay for a while with version 6 until I will have found an alternative for MyInfo - especially because I would need a better search function / filter than it is offered in version 6 (and as version 7 obviously would have it).

[wsp]

Although I don't feel as strongly about this as you do (and I certainly have no intention of abandoning MyInfo 7), I agree that the slight grayness of text in MyInfo 7 is unsettling and hard on the eyes. I raised the issue on this forum many months ago, and I can't remember now what Petko's explanation was.

Incidentally, I noticed an amusing small detail recently. When I insert a checkbox, it is sharp and black, but after I insert a check mark, the box turns more greyish. That suggests to me that it ought to be possible to render text as pure black.

[scooterg]

Hi Bill & Tester,

I found the post that Bill brought up. According to Petko, the editor is based on Chromium. According to the post, it can't be altered. You can read the post here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5824

Scot

[bevanj]

Hello Scot,
I do not have this problem but, from your examples, I can clearly see the difficulty. For font contrast, would it help you to use Segoe UI Semi-bold? This is just a guess on my part, but I hope it will help. I cannot offer any suggestion for you about colours.

[scooterg]

Hi Bevanj,

Thanks but I was not the person complaining. I was pointing out to the previous forum posts on what Petko had to say about the fonts. If you read the post that I included Petko gives a better explanation about the situation.

Scot

[wsp]

Petko, would you care to join this conversation? Have you by now found a solution to the problem of the grayish fonts?

[bevanj]

I appreciate your courtesy Scot. I apologise for my careless reading of the posts.

[scooterg]

No worries Bevanj. I agree with you. This does not bother me as much. I usually use the font Verdana or Tahoma because these fonts are the most legible fonts. I used Verdana on my resume. I was told by a writing expert to use either one of these fonts. I do prefer a blacker font but I know I can bold the fonts to make it more readable. I have to use glasses to read the screen anyway. Petko will have to weigh in if something can be done about this issue. It is possible that on the newer screens the readability could be improved from a software prospective. I know a couple of programs I have enhanced the readability of the fonts for high resolution screens. It may be possible for that to happen here.

[Tester]

Bill, Scot and bevanj, thank you all for your interest in the matter and for your comments.

I tried bevanj's suggestion:

For font contrast, would it help you to use Segoe UI Semi-bold?

Thank you very much for this tip, bevanj. Yes, with this font the readability is by far better. Something like that it should be as default (in my opinion). And I admit that in general the look of this font is very nice.

Concerning readability, this font offers more or less the same quality I had in MyInfo 6 where all my notes were (and are) created by copy and paste from MS Word doc-files where I use as standard Arial (font size 12) and seldom Trebuchet MS (also font size 12). This pasting works perfectly - there is no need to modify anything in MyInfo 6 concerning the formatting.

With MyInfo 7 pasting from MS Word works fine too. Arial and font size 12 are kept in the editor - but the look is so different.

Obviously it has to do with the situation described by Petko in his older posting, discovered by Scot:

The new text editor is based on Chromium, which unfortunately has such issues on non-HDPI monitors (that was always so, but they did that late in the development of MyInfo 7). Currently I don't know what could be done about it, as it is not in our control, but I am monitoring the situation.

So perhaps it would have been better to choose another text editor? But anyway I fear it is by far too late now to change this decision.

And by the way: Bill, as I see that you wrote in this old topic:

I've experimented with other fonts, but they're not much better.

You could try it with bevanj's suggestion: Segoe UI Semi-bold improves the situation a lot (at least on my screen).

Nevertheless at least for the moment the choice of Segoe UI Semi-bold for me could only be a workaround:

- This font obviously does not allow bold letters. When changing from Arial to Segoe UI Semi-bold the bold font is lost and when trying to choose the option in the editor, nothing happens.

- Naturally the different font leads to a different appearance / size of the letters (even when staying with size 12). The consequence is that the line break and the hyphenation (I hope these are the correct expressions) which harmonized with Arial are no longer the same on many places within a text. The result are some ugly spaces in many lines which I would have to correct manually by performing a new hyphenation. (An almost impossible lot of work with almost 25.000 notes I have.)

- And finally (but I think this could be resolved): To change the font of such a large number of notes (after importing them from MyInfo 6) should be possible in an automated way (with a template or something like that?).

Let's see what Petko can tell us. Perhaps he has some encouraging news.

[wsp]

Yes, I've experimented with other fonts (such as Gill Sans, Rockwell, and Sitka Small), but was never really satisfied with the results. (Having been an occasional book-designer in the past, I confess that I am a font-snob.)

There is also an underlying technical problem for me when I consider changing my default font. If I shift to a different default, MyInfo does not change the font of text that has been modified in any way -- e.g. italic or bold. (The same thing was true in MyInfo 6, by the way.) That means that if I were to replace my default font, Georgia, to, say, Sitka Small, I would then have to go into all of my hundreds of notes and change every italic or bold word to Sitka Small. I'm just not prepared to do that.

[Tester]

If I shift to a different default, MyInfo does not change the font of text that has been modified in any way -- e.g. italic or bold.

I see. That's a problem that I surely would have too (as I also use some italic, bold etc.). [I cannot test it now because I have MyInfo 7 only temporarily on my computer.]

So the best solution seems to be definitely one that would make it possible to stay with our "old" default font.

[Telesto]

If i'm correct a theme called 'Silver' being used. It's apparently a style he likes. It's consistent in application and the website. Also the statey's and color tabs are the same look and feel.

It's somehow intended to be less distracting (I think). The XP look of MyInfo 6 got number of complains. However we now at the other end of the spectrum; lacking the desired contrast. Even color sections tabs, notebooks or statey are washed out.

There are plans for more theming (theming support), including dark mode. Which would solve major topic for good and for all. Everyone would be able to pick what he/see likes. But it's not implemented, yet .
So ideally move forward would be getting theming support (instead of tweaking the current default). However adjusting the theme probably faster short term solution.

I agree that the slight grayness of text in MyInfo 7 is unsettling and hard on the eyes. I raised the issue on this forum many months ago, and I can't remember now what Petko's explanation was.

Is this about empty notes (so no text in editor) or filled notes. Notes without content look have a grayish font, but can be tweaked: conditional formatting. There is a report of me proposing showing an empty font a different way by default; instead of grayish font. Because I find it restless if you mix empty editor notes with filled ones. And it's the major complain: hard to read.

[wsp]

Another excellent, dark-looking font is Volkhorn Medium (freely available on the Web).

[Petko]

Unfortunately, as stated in the quoted forum topic above, the slightly grayish texts are caused by Chromium decision to abandon GDI rendering in favor of DirectWrite. The problem is that this happened well after MyInfo 7 was in development and it is not possible to change technologies so late. Apparently that is a problem that the new Microsoft Edge also shares (it now uses Chromium for rendering). I think that this might be fixed at some point now with Microsoft and their user base on board. You can see a recent discussion here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/is ... ?id=534732

[Petko]

As for theming - I am planning MyInfo to offer two or three different themes in the next major updates of MyInfo 7.