
Visual problems besetting Android's Lollipop - edent
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/12/do-all-google-employees-have-perfect-eyesight/
======
petval
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.

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davidy123
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.

~~~
yepguy
After Lasik my preferred font size more than doubled and my tolerance for low
contrast text went way down.

~~~
davidy123
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. (=

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diafygi
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_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1mkqry/firefox_24_released/cca7taf)

~~~
hawski
Thanks! I just installed Opera and it's fantastic.

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Eroica
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
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...

------
PaulHoule
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
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
My optometrist tells me the same thing as tony, although my opthalmologist
never did.

------
on_and_off
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.

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andrewfong
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.

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hga
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.

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smrtinsert
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?

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

~~~
pandeiro
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
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/introducti...](http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-
design/introduction.html)

[2] [http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-
ratio/#%23389088-on-%2300...](http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-
ratio/#%23389088-on-%23007166)

~~~
yourad_io
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
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.

