RC 1.19 hard to read IM tabs

Some of these tabs are nearly illegible to my eye. Is this how it looks to others in release candidate 1.19?

I do not see any difference with them in Release or the other viewer I am using

just as easy to read as before

looks like that in the 1.19 WindLight First Look as well.

And, since they don't flash it is sometimes several minutes before I realize someone said something

No difference to me. I like the horizontal arrangement of groups/friends tabs as opposed to the old vertical tabs.

Are the tabs in RC 1.19 flashing like they have generally done?

not sure as I stopped using it due to the stupid release keys button placement LOL

Does my picture show up at all?

Can people not tell what I'm asking about?

Some of the tabs are nearly all white. It's never been that way in past four years.

I saw your pic Sue and yes, the white on light gray is awful. Same thing in Windlight now and, no, they don't flash but for a second when an IM comes in. Just get a bit lighter shading than the inactive tab. Very difficult to distinguish when someone has said something.

ok logged back into SL on the release to see

no it doesn't flash, do not see anything different with the buttons (to me) might me my settings *shrug*

on a side note, I just discovered when viewing someone's profile, it popped up the old bug, of save changes to classified, when I tried to close the profile

searched the jira and found this..

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4635

Release Candidate 1.19 may be an "uninstall it and delete the installation file" version.

First time this has happened.

The trees are looking bizarre. The bases are changing shape. I think maybe the tree LOD has changed.

I usually end up turning the tree detail all the way down anyway because I can't stand to have the trees change size, shape, height, and to my eye they change species as you get closer or farther from them. Set the detail all the way down and they look like crap but at least they look exactly the same all the time and don't slow things down too much.

This shouldn't be of any surprise to sl residents. If you go by history, it has taught us things go backwards more then they move forward in sl. All the things pointed by Baskerville is to be expected along with many other things.

It's the nature of the beast, it can't be helped.

Sounds like this Candidate has been defeated in the Primary.

I usually use the RC viewers, I like living on the edge But 1.19.0 is the first RC viewer that's just too miserable for me to use. Too many bugs, instabilities, and whatweretheysmokingwhentheythoughtthiswasagoodideas.

I don't mind some of the UI changes, i.e. I kind of like the new nobuild nopush noscript nofly icons, and a few of the communicate layout changes look ok. Hate the fact that the im tabs only blink for a moment when you get a new im, and maybe it's just me but I don't even get the 'chime' if I get a new IM while my communicate window is closed. So unless I periodically open it and check, I don't know someone's IMed me.

Consequently, I'm back to the regular version for now.

-Atashi

The Release Keys button move is the single dumbest UI choice I have seen in some time.

I am not trying to be snarky here, but have you tried cleaning your glasses if you wear them. I know late at night I have a hell of a time trying to read somethings in sl. Or maybe your eyes have just been glued to sl for far to long and they need a break. Somthing I would never think of doing.

It looks fine to me...

Suezanne you might want to look at your monitor settings. Sometimes the contrast, brightness and color settings can get out of whack and things end up looking funny.

.d

Oh, you mean the white on gray? Gotcha. I thought you meant the actual letters or something. Now that you mention it, I actually prefer the white on gray for the inactive tabs. It's easier to see which one I'm using. Just one girl's opinion.

Honestly, I just installed the new RC 2 days ago, and I LOVE it. For some reason, it's lightning fast compared to 1.18.6. Stuff rezzes a million times faster, my textures load faster, etc etc. And I do like the new Communications window set up. The vertical tabs weren't intuitive between Groups/Contacts, whereas the horizontal tabs are easier. The only thing I don't like is the little no push/no fly/no build icons. The old ones were easier to see and much more intuitive. If I were a teacher, I'd give this RC a B+/A-. Good job, LL!

The new "grey on white" on the tabs is the new way of signalling that there is new IM text on those tabs. However is is SO SUBTLE that I am now constantly missing new IMs

The old flashing was extremely eye catching, this new mechanism is resulting in missed IMs and conversations because it is completely imperceptable on the periphery of your vision. You have to actually LOOK directly at it to see if there has been any change of state in any ims. And given that SL is NOT an IM window where there is nothing else to look it, it needs to be more clear about getting your attention off the world graphics where your eye is 99% of the time. I.e. it was perfect the way it was and it now is far less effective at getting your attention than it needs to be.

This was a huge UI un-improvement.

Exactly, it's horrible. I know there is a minority of people who hate the flashing, but I happen to like it. At the very least, they should make the newly active tabs stand out better. How about bright red? Or even better, make the UI customizable...

In case anyone here finds the need to design a graphical interface ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldry#Tinctures
Basic rules of heraldic tinctures. These have been around for over a 1000 years because even back then they knew if you wanted something to be easily identifible it needed good contrast. Silver on silver is not good contrast.

Windlight 1.19 has not bothered me much at all. Love the new Communcate menu to seasily select IMs!

What this needs is a toggle, or two, so you can set the IM pane to either flash constantly, blink once, or remain completely silent. Because sometimes you want to talk to everyone, sometimes you want to work with minimal distractions, and sometimes you want to work with no distractions at all.

Taking a wider view, maybe the Lindens need someone who can think about what customers actually need from interfaces, rather than what the loudest voices think they need right now.

Edit: For "work" in the above, also read "play".

I thought it was a bug at first; it's almost beyond my ability to believe that anyone would deliberately select the color scheme they've used.

There's a JIRA on this. See my thread

/327/96/241566/1.html

Wow, I'm really surprised that people are finding that text hard to read, and that some have described the tab color as a shade of gray. On my end, it's very legible, and it's perfectly clear that there's no gray involved at all. Those of you who are seeing gray desperately need to calibrate your monitors. The tabs are actually a shade of purple, not gray.

As sampled from Suzanne's posted image, the exact color is RGB (184, 176, 190), if anyone's curious. In a gray, the RGB values would be equal, or very close to equal. Here, we've got roughly 10% more red and blue than green, which brings it well out of the grayscale, and into the purples. If I had to name the color, I'd call it a faded lilac or wisteria (faded by the relatively high green content). But whatever you want to call it, gray is not it.

Now, some people might say "But Chosen, I've read some of your posts about hardware, and I know you're using very expensive, high-contrast monitors that most people don't have. So of course it's clearer to you than to other people." Well, that's half true. On my primary desktop I am using a pair of ultra high end monitors. But I've also got a 6 year old Dell sitting on the other side of the room, with an el cheapo $200 Samsung flat panel plugged into it, and it's showing me the same shade of purple as the expensive Eizos on my main computer. Proper settings make such a difference, even on a low quality monitor. (Although low end laptop users maybe SOL on this. Cheap laptops tend to have the worst screens on Earth.)

Where LL maybe went wrong here was in not well considering that so many people's monitors are out of whack. When designing for the masses, you do need to take that into consideration. It might have been smarter to have gone with a more "safe" color.

There does come a point though when "safe" becomes "boring", and you do have to move on. This is always a challenge for texture artists and graphic designers alike. We spend huge chunks of time, subtly shading and grading our imagery, to make something that looks fantastic on our end, only to find that half the users can't see any of it, and only see flat base tones. It's frustrating sometimes, but realistically there's not a whole lot to be done about it. Improperly maintained hardware is abundant.

The best solution, of course, would be to make the viewer's color scheme user-adjustable. Seems to me, it wouldn't be all that hard to implement. You can already change colors by hand by editing the colors_base.ini file in the app_settings folder. I can't believe it would be too much of a leap from there to build a little GUI thingy into the viewer preferences dialog to do the same thing.



Anyway, guys, if you're having trouble reading those tabs, consult your monitor's documentation for proper calibration instructions. You might also want to go into your video card's calibration setup too. Once your system is calibrated, be prepared to be a little annoyed at first, since things will look different from what you've been used to all this time. But once you notice how much you can see that you couldn't see before, that annoyance will quickly be replaced by happy surprise.

Those with poor eyesight should take this to heart especially.