On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 19:14:35 EDT, Bald Eagle wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> 
>> It seems that for accessibility reasons, the colours in use should not
>> be closely related, but should be (as Bald Eagle says) "easily
>> differentiated".  Two different shades of blue for people with various
>> colour-blindness could be problematic.  I don't have such an
>> impairment, but the two different shades of blue are still pretty
>> difficult to distinguish at a glance.
> 
> Didn't think of a color blindness issue.   Of course, one wonders what
> all of the POV-Ray renders would look like in that case.   :O ("POV-Ray
> undergrad ...   put down that beer and get over here, I have a project
> for you...")

I've got an app on my phone that actually can show you want the colors 
look like to people with various types of colour blindness - it's called 
CVSimulator.

> I think a complicating factor is that the alternating "ledger"
> highlighting colors are white and blue - which enhances the contrast
> enough in some cases, and washes it out in others.
> 
> I am still perplexed as to why it "suddenly" happened when switching to
> a new system.   The HP V241 was usually the "nice" monitor with the
> rich, vibrant colors and better contrast in comparison to the laptop
> monitor(s).  Now it's all I'm using, but I don't recall ever seeing the
> issue when using it as a dual display and moving the browser window over
> to the external monitor.   It's puzzling.

I'd noticed it in the past, but never really thought to say anything about 
it.

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 10.08.2022 23:11, Bald Eagle wrote:
> After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an external
> monitor (HP V241).
> 
> Also using Brave browser.
> 
> I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and the
> previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent.  I can barely
> tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the window, or any other
> complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new and what is not.
> 
> Perhaps this is the CSS thing that was mentioned way back.
> Anyone else experiencing trouble with this?

Go to the "Personalise" page to get the links underlined or configure 
the colors.

	Thorsten

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On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 13:15:52 +0200, Thorsten wrote:

> On 10.08.2022 23:11, Bald Eagle wrote:
>> After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an
>> external monitor (HP V241).
>> 
>> Also using Brave browser.
>> 
>> I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and
>> the previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent. 
>> I can barely tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the
>> window, or any other complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new
>> and what is not.
>> 
>> Perhaps this is the CSS thing that was mentioned way back.
>> Anyone else experiencing trouble with this?
> 
> Go to the "Personalise" page to get the links underlined or configure
> the colors.

Link colour isn't in the "Personalize" settings, just quoted text colour; 
and it's for the web forums only, not site-wide (as far as I can tell).

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 11/08/2022 07:11, Bald Eagle wrote:
> After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an external
> monitor (HP V241).
> 
> Also using Brave browser.
> 
> I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and the
> previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent.  I can barely
> tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the window, or any other
> complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new and what is not.

This is a topic I've looked at a few times over the last year or so, and 
each time I come back unsure about whether it should change or not as 
current practice seems to be to not strongly differentiate visited from 
non-visited. Even http://www.w3.org/ has only slight visual difference 
between the two states. Same goes for http://www.mozilla.org/ and 
https://en.wikipedia.org/.

Some prominent sites (e.g. Microsoft.com, Apple.com) have *no* visual 
difference (at least for me, using FireFox).

I'm open to changing the visited link colour, but I'd prefer first to 
see examples of some sites where a full blue unvisited link (which is 
what we use) is used alongside a visibly different but not 'clashing' 
visited link colour.

-- Chris

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Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:

> This is a topic I've looked at a few times over the last year or so, and
> each time I come back unsure about whether it should change or not as
> current practice seems to be to not strongly differentiate visited from
> non-visited. Even http://www.w3.org/ has only slight visual difference
> between the two states. Same goes for http://www.mozilla.org/ and

Perhaps that's what it is like NOW, but:

1.  I feel like we're all being increasingly gaslighted, because having used the
Internet since its inception (using Lynx and Netscape's Mosaic), I remember
there being an unmistakable difference.  Like, bright blue underlined links, and
nearly red visited links.

2.  Whatever's going on NOW is ... trendy.  And who cares.   This is our little
corner of the internet, and it's *** POV-Ray ***.   Do we EVER do anything the
way everyone else does it?

3.   "Be yourself.  Be different.  Celebrate diversity.  Carve out your own
niche.  Do it your own unique way.  You do you."

 ...

"WAIT!!!   NOOooooooo!   Not THAT WAY!!!!!"

:|

> Some prominent sites (e.g. Microsoft.com, Apple.com) have *no* visual
> difference (at least for me, using FireFox).

Apple sucks.  If we want to emulate them, let's start stealing code libraries,
bump up the price of our product, start a child labor coding sweatshop, and
install suicide nets.

Microsoft sucks.  If we want to emulate them, we need to have WAaaaaaay more
updates, break things, change things, ignore user feedback, have our product
fail to function and crash the entire OS on a regular basis, be WAaaaaaaaay
larger on install, have 37 different versions and a very expensive Enterprise
version, licensing, keys, bloat, spyware, corporate greed, and end-of-life
versions where we no longer care about support or backward compatibility.

> I'm open to changing the visited link colour, but I'd prefer first to
> see examples of some sites where a full blue unvisited link (which is
> what we use) is used alongside a visibly different but not 'clashing'
> visited link colour.
>
> -- Chris

Google.
"By default, most search engines such as Google and Bing mark results you
clicked through as purple and results unvisited as blue"
https://www.softwarehow.com/change-color-visited-links/

Brave search engine.

Stack Exchange.
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/136432/should-visited-and-unvisited-links-be-of-different-color

Nielsen Norman Group
World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/change-the-color-of-visited-links/


https://usabilitygeek.com/hyperlink-usability-guidelines-usable-links/
"Visited links: Let users know which links they have clicked on by toning done

blue to purple-ish colour."

https://blog.tbhcreative.com/2019/12/user-friendly-link-state-design.html
"Visited state
The visited state indicates a link that you have previously visited in your

usability.

Google helpfully displays visited links in different styles to make it clear


Visited states help to prevent user frustration. If users can quickly tell the

at them, they can better navigate through content. This is especially useful on
websites with many links, such as a wiki site, or within a page with search
results."


https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/the-definitive-guide-to-styling-web-links/

Visited links are often overlooked, but they are very helpful, especially on


them again.


obvious as unvisited links."


https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/what-color-should-you-use-for-visited-links


At first I thought it was my computer, or monitor, or some (@#$%&*!) "setting",
and then, I was just a touch concerned about:
"blue is not a panacea for accessibility problems; elderly users actually have
greater trouble perceiving blue, according to a study by Karyn Graves. She also

compared to other colours over time, and so the ability to focus on blue

accessibility will begin to have the edge."

.... not for myself, of course, but for ... you know ... some of our more senior
forum members...   :D


* * *BUT THEN * * *


I also just asked my 12-yo.
"What color are new links and visited links?"
"New are blue, visited are orange."
(Show him the POV-Ray message digest....)
(He face-palms and shakes his head.)


So let's get hip with the younger generation and get all retro and vintage with
those blue and orange/purple links.  'Cause Orange is the new (insufficiently)
Faded Blue.

BE out.

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On Wed, 17 Aug 2022 01:11:27 +1000, Chris Cason wrote:

> I'm open to changing the visited link colour, but I'd prefer first to
> see examples of some sites where a full blue unvisited link (which is
> what we use) is used alongside a visibly different but not 'clashing'
> visited link colour.

Here's a good reference for web accessibility:

https://webaim.org/blog/wcag-2-0-and-link-colors/

Looks like the recommendation is either a colour that's specific for 
links, or a colour scheme that's dependent on the state.  No real best 
practice for using it or not (Google uses the state and indicates as such; 
Microsoft doesn't).

I think a visited link colour change is helpful, as often times I visit a 
site and am trying to remember where I saw something, and the visual 
indicator can be helpful to track that down.

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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hi,

"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> ...
> I think a complicating factor is that the alternating "ledger" highlighting
> colors are white and blue - which enhances the contrast enough in some cases,
> and washes it out in others.

istr seeing blue and magenta (visited) links in the late 90s/turn of the
century, and think they would work (well), even with the ledger "lines".


regards, jr.

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Op 17-8-2022 om 08:59 schreef jr:
> 
> istr seeing blue and magenta (visited) links in the late 90s/turn of the
> century, and think they would work (well), even with the ledger "lines".
> 

If this Old Guy may be allowed to add his unworthy contribution, I agree 
with jr. I am using Startpage (www.startpage.com) on Firefox, and with 
the dark background option switched on, which agrees better with my old 
eyes. Blue and magenta (I think) are used there to my entire satisfaction.

-- 
Thomas

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On 17/08/2022 06:27, Bald Eagle wrote:
> because having used the Internet since its inception (using Lynx and Netscape's
Mosaic), I remember

As have I. I set up povray.org in 1994, after all, and Lynx/Mosaic were 
my first browsers ...

> 2.  Whatever's going on NOW is ... trendy.  And who cares.   This is our little
> corner of the internet, and it's *** POV-Ray ***.   Do we EVER do anything the
> way everyone else does it?
> 
> 3.   "Be yourself.  Be different.  Celebrate diversity.  Carve out your own
> niche.  Do it your own unique way.  You do you."

We're talking about a color scheme that has not changed in literally 20 
years. Clearly if I was worried about keeping up with what everyone else 
was doing I would have done so sometime in the last two decades ...

Given the colors have been as they are for so long it should hardly be 
surprising to anyone that I would look around the web to see what others 
are doing so I can understand what is "wrong" about our styles, in the 
belief that perhaps things have changed and what people are expecting 
from povray.org *no longer matches* expectations that people have 
learned from other sites.

I think this is not an unreasonable belief to have had since what else 
am I supposed to think? That it's been OK for 20 years but now it's not 
OK for some reason totally *unrelated* to anything that's happened 
elsewhere in the intarwebs?

So when I go looking around the web for examples that show why I'm doing 
it *wrong* I just end up confused. As I pointed out even the W3C 
(standard-setters of the web) use similarly close shades between visited 
& unvisited.

I'm not just going to yoink some random colour into the stylesheet 
unless I know it's going to work for everyone AND be consistent with the 
overall theme for the site, because if there's one thing I've learned 
from working on this project for the last quarter-century is that I can 
never make everyone happy and changing something to suit one group of 
people will inevitably make another group unhappy.

If someone wants to provide a mock-up of a page with modified colors 
that fits into the existing theme but also makes the difference more 
obvious then please feel free and I'll look at it. I'm open to changing 
it. But y'all need to give me a bit of help here if you want it to happen.

-- Chris

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On 17.08.2022 11:58, Chris Cason wrote:
> We're talking about a color scheme that has not changed in literally 20 
> years. Clearly if I was worried about keeping up with what everyone else 
> was doing I would have done so sometime in the last two decades ...

In deed. It would be possible to add a third style for it on the 
"Personalise" page where the underlining can be enabled, but I really 
don't remember how much work this would end up being on other ends of 
the old PHP code...

Thorsten

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