6 ms·

Visual problems besetting Android's Lollipop

69 points by edent 12y ago

hga 12y ago
Similar bad design decisions prevent my father from using Chrome on Linux, at least as of when I set it up a year ago. I couldn't make the text in tabs bigger, something Firefox has no trouble with.
davidy123 12y ago
This season, watching family members struggle with new devices, it struck me that even if empowered tech enhancers don't have poor vision (or other suboptimal abilities), they should at least identify with the struggles of their parents and people they know, and this will increasingly be reflected as cohorts grows older. My dad has always been involved in technology and he eagerly explores new features, but he's very often tripped up by poor usability choices. But in general with open competition things have been getting startlingly better each month. Worth mentioning Lasik doesn't help here, it only helps with far vision, it can actually make near vision worse because it can cause other visual aberrations.
- edent 12y ago
  Ah, didn't know that about Lasik. Will look at amending the post, thanks :-)
- yepguy 12y ago
  After Lasik my preferred font size more than doubled and my tolerance for low contrast text went way down.
  - davidy123 12y ago
    That's my experience too, in addition to noticing "floaters" a lot (distractingly) more and also having moisture problems with my eyes. So clearly laser eye surgery is not helpful for typical tech workers. The rest of the article is great though. (=
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
diafygi 12y ago
Firefox also used to have text reflow when zooming, but they removed it for some reason[1][2]. This is the sole reason I use Opera on mobile. [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298 [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1mkqry/firefox_24_released/cca7taf https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1mkqry/firefox_24_...
- hawski 12y ago
  Thanks! I just installed Opera and it's fantastic.
raldi 12y ago
My solution for this is to hold my phone in landscape mode.
- aaronem 12y ago
  #WORKSFORME #WONTFIX
- pandeiro 12y ago
  s/solution/workaround Text reflow was/is a killer feature of the original Android browser (which cyanogenmod still uses, fortunately). Reading the HN front page is a PITA without it.
javajosh 12y ago
It's a little unsporting to whack Google over the head with it's own (very recently) released design guidelines[1], but hey, Google is a corporation and so basically has the feelings of a psychopath, and compassion and empathy is wasted on it, right? :) Of course the OP is correct when he says those contrast ratios (nice tool[2] for calculating that, BTW) are way too low. [1] http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introducti... [2] http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio/#%23389088-on-%23007166 http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio/#%23389088-on-%2300...
- yourad_io 12y ago
  Like the author says, Google isn't a startup any more. Android is a huge ecosystem, and releasing something with these many problems, is not really up to standard. "Google started it", if you will, when they offered me this update OTA. Now my experience is severely downgraded.[1] I've been intending to do my own bugs&annoyances writeup - my overall experience with 5.0 and 5.0.1 has been bad enough that I'm dumping L for cyanogenmod 4.4. I tried to do it yesterday, in fact, but adb backup with the -shared option seems to hang forever with 5.0.1 :/ [1] I kinda see that I may be coming off as a whiny, change-resistant douche here, but I don't think that is the case: I was actually very excited about the 5.0 release - both for the material design update (i felt it looked great on paper) and for the new runtime. I was prepared for UI/X changes, obviously. I was prepared to forgive bugs as well, but not at this level. ("How excited?" - "Manually-checking-for-updates-several-times-a-day-for-weeks excited. Plenty")
  - javajosh 12y ago
    Heh, apparently the tone of my post wasn't clear - I don't normally use the word "unsporting", or smileys, in my post. :) I'm a big fan of complaining, actually. It's a good cost/benefit potential, the only downside is when the target becomes alienated. The upside to psychopathy is that criticism is just data, and not alienating. I hope that, if and when I release some software into the world, I will be able to treat complaint as data. Cheers.
  - jnamaya 12y ago
smrtinsert 12y ago
The zoom is why I have always used dolphin on android and probably always will. Can we call these set of bugs Mac Retina Blindness?
petval 12y ago
The contast point of the article is so true. The light gray text on white background which is so trendy nowadays is terribly uncomfortable, especially outside in brighter light. I really hate black on white, it has something to do with my eyes and white on black is much more comfortable. Desktop can be set, desktop browsers can be styled using userscripts or addons but mobile hardly. So I would love to have the option to render light text on dark backgrounds independently of the page CSS on mobile browsers and I don't mean the silly Chrome invert mode that inverts the images as well. Mobile apps would be better with this especially at night with lights off it is much more comfortable than the white background no matter how much dimming or redshifting you use. Some have dark themes but lot of them don't.
PaulHoule 12y ago
This Christmas they couldn't get the kids to watch Arthur on pbs because the little ones were running around with Nintendo 2dses and playing with smart phones. I saw my cousin tony who is a PlayStation enthusiast and asked him why he didn't buy a Vita and he said that close focusing wrecks your eyes. I learned to read at 3 1/2 and by the time I was in school I couldn't see the blackboard. I felt wearing glasses isolated me from people and made it harder to fit into school. At least I got good at reading so I put up good numbers in high school and college and went on to get a PhD. It is so ironic that mobile technology will make people's vision get worse except then all you know about is Mario and Yoshi.
- janto 12y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think eyestrain has any long term effects. Mobile technology won't make people's vision worse.
  - PaulHoule 12y ago
    My optometrist tells me the same thing as tony, although my opthalmologist never did.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure screen use doesn't result in myopia. I'm also pretty sure that wearing glasses carries essentially no stigma in the developed world.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  I learned to read not much later than you and now that I'm past 40 my vision has degenerated to "only" 20/20
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Eroica 12y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with the author here, but I also think Apple is even worse in some regards. Ever since iOS 7 I don't even trust their UI guidelines anymore. Look at this picture of the Music app on my iPhone: http://imgur.com/6ADrt9U http://imgur.com/6ADrt9U What does the text on the bottom mean? Oh you can't read it? Yeah it's Chinese. These are the "buttons" for Repeat, Shuffle, etc. I have no idea what kind of designer thought it was wise to use text instead of icons there, especially since most icons in a music player are easily recognized most of the time. It all started with this "trend" to go flat, now I can't even see what are supposed to be buttons and what not.
- blkhp19 12y ago
  I can't read it because I can't read Chinese. Since people speak mostly English on this website, why wouldn't you post a screenshot of the app running in English? I don't think people would have a hard time deciphering the text in their native language. Also, my parents (both new iPhone users) would have no idea what the shuffle and repeat icons mean. They're not tech-savvy at all and don't recognize those icons. However, they've seen play, pause, and skip buttons their entire lives on radios. I think Apple deliberately chose to make certain buttons text. Seriously, why would you use a Chinese screenshot as an example? I'm so confused as to what your thought process was... of course nobody can read it...
andrewfong 12y ago
After a brief stint on Windows Phone, I recently switched back to Android and was mildly amused that, thanks to the lack of word wrap, the browsing experience on mobile Chrome was somehow worse than mobile IE.
on_and_off 12y ago
The contrast problem is indeed true in some screens. I don't know how much of it is due to the .0 version rush.. Many things are still rough around the edges in material and I expect the platform to really start to shine with the .1 version. The text wrap problem is pretty weak though. As far as I can see, this 'bug' report was well managed. It is not a bug, just somebody disagreeing with a change in the platform. It is well explained in the 4.4 release documentation, along with the reasons behind it. Unless the author explains why the Chrome team is mistaken, this is entirely pointless.

69 points by edent 12y ago

hga 12y ago

Similar bad design decisions prevent my father from using Chrome on Linux, at least as of when I set it up a year ago. I couldn't make the text in tabs bigger, something Firefox has no trouble with.

davidy123 12y ago

This season, watching family members struggle with new devices, it struck me that even if empowered tech enhancers don't have poor vision (or other suboptimal abilities), they should at least identify with the struggles of their parents and people they know, and this will increasingly be reflected as cohorts grows older. My dad has always been involved in technology and he eagerly explores new features, but he's very often tripped up by poor usability choices. But in general with open competition things have been getting startlingly better each month. Worth mentioning Lasik doesn't help here, it only helps with far vision, it can actually make near vision worse because it can cause other visual aberrations.

edent 12y ago
Ah, didn't know that about Lasik. Will look at amending the post, thanks :-)
yepguy 12y ago
After Lasik my preferred font size more than doubled and my tolerance for low contrast text went way down.
- davidy123 12y ago
  That's my experience too, in addition to noticing "floaters" a lot (distractingly) more and also having moisture problems with my eyes. So clearly laser eye surgery is not helpful for typical tech workers. The rest of the article is great though. (=

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

diafygi 12y ago

Firefox also used to have text reflow when zooming, but they removed it for some reason[1][2]. This is the sole reason I use Opera on mobile. [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298 [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1mkqry/firefox_24_released/cca7taf https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1mkqry/firefox_24_...

hawski 12y ago
Thanks! I just installed Opera and it's fantastic.

raldi 12y ago

My solution for this is to hold my phone in landscape mode.

aaronem 12y ago
#WORKSFORME #WONTFIX
pandeiro 12y ago
s/solution/workaround Text reflow was/is a killer feature of the original Android browser (which cyanogenmod still uses, fortunately). Reading the HN front page is a PITA without it.

javajosh 12y ago

It's a little unsporting to whack Google over the head with it's own (very recently) released design guidelines[1], but hey, Google is a corporation and so basically has the feelings of a psychopath, and compassion and empathy is wasted on it, right? :) Of course the OP is correct when he says those contrast ratios (nice tool[2] for calculating that, BTW) are way too low. [1] http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introducti... [2] http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio/#%23389088-on-%23007166 http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio/#%23389088-on-%2300...

yourad_io 12y ago
Like the author says, Google isn't a startup any more. Android is a huge ecosystem, and releasing something with these many problems, is not really up to standard. "Google started it", if you will, when they offered me this update OTA. Now my experience is severely downgraded.[1] I've been intending to do my own bugs&annoyances writeup - my overall experience with 5.0 and 5.0.1 has been bad enough that I'm dumping L for cyanogenmod 4.4. I tried to do it yesterday, in fact, but adb backup with the -shared option seems to hang forever with 5.0.1 :/ [1] I kinda see that I may be coming off as a whiny, change-resistant douche here, but I don't think that is the case: I was actually very excited about the 5.0 release - both for the material design update (i felt it looked great on paper) and for the new runtime. I was prepared for UI/X changes, obviously. I was prepared to forgive bugs as well, but not at this level. ("How excited?" - "Manually-checking-for-updates-several-times-a-day-for-weeks excited. Plenty")
- javajosh 12y ago
  Heh, apparently the tone of my post wasn't clear - I don't normally use the word "unsporting", or smileys, in my post. :) I'm a big fan of complaining, actually. It's a good cost/benefit potential, the only downside is when the target becomes alienated. The upside to psychopathy is that criticism is just data, and not alienating. I hope that, if and when I release some software into the world, I will be able to treat complaint as data. Cheers.
- jnamaya 12y ago

smrtinsert 12y ago

The zoom is why I have always used dolphin on android and probably always will. Can we call these set of bugs Mac Retina Blindness?

petval 12y ago

The contast point of the article is so true. The light gray text on white background which is so trendy nowadays is terribly uncomfortable, especially outside in brighter light. I really hate black on white, it has something to do with my eyes and white on black is much more comfortable. Desktop can be set, desktop browsers can be styled using userscripts or addons but mobile hardly. So I would love to have the option to render light text on dark backgrounds independently of the page CSS on mobile browsers and I don't mean the silly Chrome invert mode that inverts the images as well. Mobile apps would be better with this especially at night with lights off it is much more comfortable than the white background no matter how much dimming or redshifting you use. Some have dark themes but lot of them don't.

PaulHoule 12y ago

This Christmas they couldn't get the kids to watch Arthur on pbs because the little ones were running around with Nintendo 2dses and playing with smart phones. I saw my cousin tony who is a PlayStation enthusiast and asked him why he didn't buy a Vita and he said that close focusing wrecks your eyes. I learned to read at 3 1/2 and by the time I was in school I couldn't see the blackboard. I felt wearing glasses isolated me from people and made it harder to fit into school. At least I got good at reading so I put up good numbers in high school and college and went on to get a PhD. It is so ironic that mobile technology will make people's vision get worse except then all you know about is Mario and Yoshi.

janto 12y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think eyestrain has any long term effects. Mobile technology won't make people's vision worse.
- PaulHoule 12y ago
  My optometrist tells me the same thing as tony, although my opthalmologist never did.
matthewmacleod 12y ago
I'm pretty sure screen use doesn't result in myopia. I'm also pretty sure that wearing glasses carries essentially no stigma in the developed world.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
I learned to read not much later than you and now that I'm past 40 my vision has degenerated to "only" 20/20

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Eroica 12y ago

I wholeheartedly agree with the author here, but I also think Apple is even worse in some regards. Ever since iOS 7 I don't even trust their UI guidelines anymore. Look at this picture of the Music app on my iPhone: http://imgur.com/6ADrt9U http://imgur.com/6ADrt9U What does the text on the bottom mean? Oh you can't read it? Yeah it's Chinese. These are the "buttons" for Repeat, Shuffle, etc. I have no idea what kind of designer thought it was wise to use text instead of icons there, especially since most icons in a music player are easily recognized most of the time. It all started with this "trend" to go flat, now I can't even see what are supposed to be buttons and what not.

blkhp19 12y ago
I can't read it because I can't read Chinese. Since people speak mostly English on this website, why wouldn't you post a screenshot of the app running in English? I don't think people would have a hard time deciphering the text in their native language. Also, my parents (both new iPhone users) would have no idea what the shuffle and repeat icons mean. They're not tech-savvy at all and don't recognize those icons. However, they've seen play, pause, and skip buttons their entire lives on radios. I think Apple deliberately chose to make certain buttons text. Seriously, why would you use a Chinese screenshot as an example? I'm so confused as to what your thought process was... of course nobody can read it...

andrewfong 12y ago

After a brief stint on Windows Phone, I recently switched back to Android and was mildly amused that, thanks to the lack of word wrap, the browsing experience on mobile Chrome was somehow worse than mobile IE.

on_and_off 12y ago

The contrast problem is indeed true in some screens. I don't know how much of it is due to the .0 version rush.. Many things are still rough around the edges in material and I expect the platform to really start to shine with the .1 version. The text wrap problem is pretty weak though. As far as I can see, this 'bug' report was well managed. It is not a bug, just somebody disagreeing with a change in the platform. It is well explained in the 4.4 release documentation, along with the reasons behind it. Unless the author explains why the Chrome team is mistaken, this is entirely pointless.